March 19, 2023
1
Samuel 16.1-13; Ephesians 5.8-14; John 9.1-14
+ I know it’s not quite the word one
would expect at this half-way point through Lent.
In fact, it sounds suspiciously like a
word we haven’t used at all during this season—a certain A word that rhymes
with Malleluia.
But “Rejoice” is the word for today.
And it’s a good word to have.
Today is, of course, Lataere Sunday.
Laetare means, of course, mean "Rejoice" in Latin.
We are rejoicing on this Sunday because we are now at the midpoint of Lent.
We get a little break from Lent on this Sunday.
It’s not all purple and swishes and ashes around us.
It’s good to rejoice.
It’s good to take this time and just…breathe.
It’s good to reorient ourselves.
Ash Wednesday on February 22 seems like a long time ago already.
And Easter on April 9th seems to be in a very distant future.
This is where we are—right smack dab in the middle of this season.
The Gospel reading for this Sunday in the old lectionaries was John 6:1-15, the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes -- symbols of the Eucharist to come on Maundy Thursday of Holy Week.
But, I’m happy we have the Gospel reading we have for today.
This story of Jesus healing the blind man speaks very loud and very clear to us.
In a sense today—Lataere Sunday, this half-way mark
of Lent—is a time for us to examine this whole sense of blindness.
Not just physical blindness, but spiritual
blindness, as well.
My theme for Lent this year, as you
have all heard me say by now, has been brokenness.
In a sense, our brokenness and our
blindness are similar.
In our brokenness we become like blind
people—or, at least, like nearsighted people.
We grope about.
We find ourselves dependent upon those
things that we think give us come sense of clarity.
But ultimately, nothing really seems to
heal our nearsightedness.
In fact our sight seems to get worse
and worse as we go on.
For some of us our blindness is real
spiritual blindness.
And the causes of our blindness may
simply be things like depression or anxiety or frustration or anger or grief.
As you all know, I have certainly been
wandering around like a blind man for the last five years.
These five years since my mother died
have been years of deep darkness for me.
These were years that truly broke me.
And I have been very honest about that.
You have walked with me through these
dark years.
This was driven home to me in my
creative life.
As you all know, in addition to being
your priest, I am also a poet.
And poetry has been as much a part of
my life, and who I am as my being a priest.
But for these five years, my poetic
career languished.
I could not get much published.
I shouldn’t say that.
I won a couple of awards during that
time.
I did publish in some journals.
But I wasn’t able to write like I did
for the 25 years before that.
The book I sent out wasn’t rejected.
I could’ve handled that.
It was ignored.
And that was a first for me.
I truly examined myself during that
time and wondered if maybe I was done as a poet.
Examining ourselves is a good thing. But….
The problem to doing so is this: don’t
examine yourself too closely when you are walking around like a blind person.
Because you aren’t “seeing” anything.
And grief is blindness that truly does
enclose us in an ugly, dark place that does not allow growth.
In our Gospel reading for today, we
find a man blind from birth.
The miracle Jesus performs for him is
truly a BIG miracle.
Can you imagine what it must’ve been
like for this man?
Here he is, born without sight,
suddenly seeing.
It must have been quite a shock.
It would, no doubt, involve a complete
reeducation of one’s whole self.
By the time he reached the age he
was—he was maybe in his twenties or thirties—he no doubt had an idea in his
mind of what things may have looked like.
And, with the return of his vision, he
was, I’m certain, amazed at what things actually looked like.
Even things we might take for granted,
such as the faces of our mother and father or spouse, would have been new for
this man.
So, the miracle Jesus performs is truly
a far-ranging miracle.
There’s also an interesting analytical
post-script to our Gospel reading.
(And I’m certain I’ve shared this story
with you, but I always found it interesting)
St Basil the Great and other early
Church Fathers believe that this blind man was not only born blind, he was
actually born without eyes as some kind of birth defect
This, they say, is why Jesus takes clay
and places them upon the empty sockets, essentially forming eyes for this man.
When he washes them in the waters of
Siloam, the eyes of clay became real eyes with perfect sight.
It’s a great story, but the real gist
of this story is about us.
Our spiritual blindness often causes us
to ignore those in need around us and this blindness causes distance and
isolation in our lives, making our brokenness even deeper and more pronounced.
For me, my spiritual and creative eyes
were washed too, just recently.
A few weeks ago, that book I had been
sending around and was being ignored was accepted just days after I sent it out
to what I said would be the last publisher I would send it to.
Suddenly the darkness lifted.
Suddenly, I say in a way I had not seen
for five years.
Suddenly, the projects started rolling
in.
The dam broke and all those years of
creative energy that had been blocked up by grief and pain and darkness came
rushing forward.
We have all experienced moments like
this in our lives.
And when we do, how do we respond?
We respond by rejoicing.
Let me tell you, I have been rejoicing
this Lent!
That is certainly what this Sunday, Lataere
Sunday, is all about.
As we head into the latter part of
Lent, we find ourselves rejoicing.
We find ourselves relieved from the
heavy sense of brokenness we have been dealing with throughout Lent so far.
We find ourselves bathed in light—a
rose-colored light.
Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians shows us that we are not children of darkness.
We are not meant to walk around,
groping about in our lives.
We are not meant to walk under clouds
of grief and pain and anxiety and depression in our lives.
We are meant to walk in light.
We are meant to embody light in our
lives.
And, by that, we are not just meant to
hold the light close to us, as though it’s some special gift we are given.
We are not meant to hoard the light.
As children of light, we are meant to
share the light.
We are meant to be conduits of that
light.
To everyone.
Even when we might not feel like it.
We are anointed in much the same way
David was anointed by the prophet Samuel in our reading from the Hebrew Scripture
today.
We, who were anointed at our baptism,
are now called to be what David was—a person on whom the Spirit of God comes in
great power.
That Spirit brings light.
That Spirit brings spiritual clarity.
That Spirit brings vision.
That is what we are doing on this day.
Lataere Sunday, also known as Rose
Sunday or Mothering Sunday or Refreshment Sunday—is a break in our Lenten
grayness.
It is a time to refocus, to readjust
ourselves again, to remind ourselves of our anointing, of the light that dwells
within each of us.
Today, even in Lent, we can be joyful.
It is a time for us to realize that our
brokenness is not an eternal brokenness.
We realize today that no matter how
broken or fractured we might seem, we can be made whole once again.
No matter how blind or nearsighted we
might be spiritually, our spiritual sight can be returned to us once again.
Lataere Sunday is a great time to
remind ourselves that, even in our brokenness, we will not be broken forever.
We will be made whole like the blind
man.
There will be resurrection.
We too will see with clarity and
vision—with new eyes.
And like him, we too will see the
darkness lifted from our lives and God’s dazzling light breaking through.
So, today, on this Lataere Sunday—on
this joyful Sunday in Lent—let us be joyful.
Let’s be joyful, even in our
brokenness.
Let us be joyful even as we grope
about, spiritually half-blind as we may be at times.
Let us be joyful, because our
brokenness and our blindness are only temporary
But our joy—now that is eternal.
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