Fourth Sunday of Lent: Second Scrutiny

Readings: 1 Sam 16:1b.6-7.10-13a;- Ps 23:1-6; Eph 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

A prophet, a king, two anointings, the LORD as a shepherd, light, darkness, awakening, Jesus, a blind man, a washing, a healing, a warning of judgment- our readings for the Second Scrutiny of our Elect contain enough material to write a good-sized book! Maybe it will be an international best-seller. Perhaps we’ll call it “the Bible.”

Looking at Samuel's response to the LORD's prompting to head to Bethlehem to the house of Jesse to find and anoint Israel's new king, which was necessitated by the current king’s disobedience, we see that it was only after Samuel considered six of Jesse's seven sons that he found God's anointed in the seventh, that is, the least among them- even though, biblically-speaking, seven is the number of completeness.

This episode dramatically highlights the fact that God often (as in almost-always) chooses the least likely person to accomplish his purposes. Of course, Jesus himself, the only begotten Son of the Father, is the ultimate proof of this divine tendency. Why does God work this way? I think it's so that there is no doubt that it is God who is at work reconciling the world to himself and, while requiring our cooperation, is not accomplished by human effort.

You don't have to take my word to verify that God chooses the least likely people to accomplish his purposes, or even that of Sacred Scripture, just look around, not only at the Elect, but at the rest of us, at the ekklesia, that is, the Church, and not just in the pews, but up here on the chancel, too. I believe that what St Paul wrote to the ancient Church in Corinth still applies today:

consider your own calling... Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption¹

The people of God remain the original motley crew. According to the upside-down nature of God's Kingdom, being the least and lowly is the surest sign of election.

My dear Elect, you have been called by the Lord from darkness to live in the glory of his magnificent light, which illumines you from within and is the very power of the Holy Spirit. It is by means of the Holy Spirit that our risen Lord remains present, not just to us, but in and through us until he comes again. And so, heed the apostle's exhortation: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”²

It has been observed that “original sin is the one verifiable Christian dogma.”³ Accordingly, in the most real sense, we are all born blind. Like the man Jesus heals by restoring his sight in today’s Gospel, without doing all the required theological parsing, there is a scriptural sense in which our blindness is not necessarily the result of either our sin or that of our parents. St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, noted:

creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God⁴

This is wonderfully and gloriously sung about at the beginning of the upcoming Easter Vigil in that great and ancient hymn, the Exsultet:

O happy fault, that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!⁵

My dear Elect, Christ has elected you, which election we confirmed a few weeks ago at the Rite of Election. Like the blind man in today's Gospel, you are chosen so “that the works of God might be made visible through [you].”⁶

Always bear in mind that you have done nothing to earn your election. Your chosen-ness, like David's, is a bit of a mystery. Keep in mind that God's glory shines forth much more through your faults, failures, and weaknesses than through your gifts, talents, and things you are good at. But you are chosen to bear witness to others about what Jesus has done for you and to invite them to meet the Savior that they, too, might see.

Again, like the blind man in today's Gospel, who immediately began to pay a price for being chosen (another of those great mysteries- that of the cross), you will be washed in baptism, anointed in confirmation, and further drawn into the very life of God. In communion you will be fully incorporated into Christ’s verum corpus, his true Body. Then you can truly say, “I was blind and now I see.”⁷

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1 1 Corinthians 1:26-30.^↩
2 Ephesians 5:14.^↩
3 James Martin, S.J., Jesus: A Pigrimage, 100.^↩
4 Romans 8:20-21.^↩
5 Roman Missal, “The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night,” sec. 19.^↩
6 John 9:3.^↩
7 John 9:25.^↩