Monday • 2/14/2022
Monday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89; Genesis 30:1–24; 1 John 1:1–10; John 9:1–17

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

Genesis 30: children born of grace. The utter grace of it all! The Bible never lets us forget that. The twelve tribes of Israel, easily romanticized as the pillars of God’s people, came about through the bitter rivalry between Jacob’s wives, one wanted (Rachel) and one unwanted (Leah). Despite all the machinations and bruised relationships, it’s pure grace that causes unwanted Leah to become mother to Israel’s priestly and kingly lines (Levi and Judah — and ultimately, to Jesus). The same grace gives near-to-despairing Rachel a single child, the last to be fathered by Jacob. That son’s story will crown the Genesis account. The exile of this son, Joseph, to Egypt forecasts both the exodus under Moses and the figure of a future suffering and overcoming Savior. 

When we feel ourselves surrounded by bad actors who manipulate their way into favor and power, especially in the name of God, this portion of Genesis can be, ironically, a bracing and encouraging read. Somehow, God will win the day. He always does. His redemptive purposes stand. 

John 9: the light that enlightens. In John 9, the eternal Light of the World engages our blindness and confusion. Jesus comes upon a man who has been blind from birth. His disciples pose what must have seemed to them like a deep theological question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Jesus dismisses their question: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). 

In a world conditioned by sin and colored by the Fall, there is no one-to-one correspondence between a person’s behavior or personal sinfulness and their physical health, or of their social status for that matter. Confusion over that fact is itself a part of the blindness of sin. Disability is not a sign of moral deficiency. Nor is health an index of spiritual well-being. Nor is privilege a sign of worthiness. As this story unfolds, we will see that the religious leaders are more blind than the man who can’t see with his physical eyes: the eyes of their hearts are blind to the Light of the World! 

Jesus presses past the speculative theological confusion about the origin of suffering. He spits on the ground and makes mud from his spittle and the dirt. Don’t read past that too quickly! Heaven’s Rescuer combines his spit with the dust of our origin (“from dust you came”) to heal this son of Adam. Jesus spreads the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him to a pool (the name of which means “Sent”). “Go wash,” he tells him. And in that washing the lights come on! Small wonder the early church called baptism an “enlightenment.”* John’s Gospel announces early on that “in him was life, and the life was the light of mankind” (John 1:4 NET). 

1 John: what we’ve seen with our eyes. Now, if the apostle John authored the gospel that bears his name (and I think he did) and if that same John penned the Johannine epistles (and I think he did), it’s easy to imagine him capturing his own reaction to just such a sign: “…what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it…” (1 John 1b–2a). To the healing of the man born blind add turning water into wine at Cana (John 2), healing the royal official’s son in Capernaum and the paralytic at Bethesda (John 4 & 5), the feeding of the 5,000 his walking on the water (John 6), and the raising of Lazarus (John 11). Crowning it all, of course, is Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, when he shows the disciples “his hands and his side” (John 20:20) and even invites Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (John 20:27). 

The grace that worked through the dysfunction of Jacob’s family was no abstraction. That Grace is capitalized. That Grace walked in sandaled feet. That Grace merged heaven and earth. That Grace spat and sent, healed and instructed — and died and rose again. Because he rose from the dead, that Grace comes still, and heals still. For now, we experience but partial healing, whether physical or emotional, psychological or relational. One day, we will experience full healing of body, soul, and spirit. One day, as John says later in 1 John,) “when [Jesus[ is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Then it will be our turn to join our voice to John’s “what we have seen, with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands!” May that Grace give us courage and strength and hope, 

… so that we may be blessed this day. Amen!

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Jesus Feet" by Ben Lowery is licensed under CC BY 2.0

* Gregory of Nazianzus, Festal Orations, translation with introduction and commentary by Nonna Verna Harrison (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2008), Oration 40, “On Baptism,” ch. 3.