‘Rabbi, who sinned?’

March 30
Fourth Sunday of Lent

Readings:
1 Samuel 16: 1B, 6-7, 10-13A
Psalms 23: 1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6
Ephesians 5: 8-14
John 9: 1-41

Catholics who glance at the Sunday morning television preachers will discover an unfamiliar world of a worship scene dominated by what’s called prosperity preachers. The most notable is Joel Osteen, the Houston-based minister who fills a former NBA basketball arena each Sunday.
The message can be capsulized simply: read the Bible, develop a relationship with Jesus, pray, and act righteously. God will then bless you, your health will improve, and prosperity will be found as a sign that the believer is in God’s favor.
The message is consoling and appeals to common sense. Do well, pray, get a chummy relationship with God, and wealth and good health will come in return. No wonder it’s popular, a cosmic deal that is attainable and inspirational.
Still it has little to do with what Jesus taught.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is confronted by a man blind from birth. The man must have been a part of the local scene, as subsequent events indicate that just about everyone knew of him. We know he was a beggar, and perhaps he generated a fair share of resentment among his fellow Jews who worked for a living. He may well have been perceived as a freeloader. He wasn’t held in high esteem.
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” the disciples asked.
Neither, says Jesus.
Many would cringe at the stupidity of the disciples’ question. I have a brother born deaf. As an adult, my deaf brother tries to navigate through the social life of the hearing world. At family parties, he often only catches snippets of social banter. Yet we are of the same parents, and it’s hard to imagine his impairment as some kind of divine punishment. In fact, the deaf have turned that view around, with some proclaiming, through a sophisticated cultural and social network, that their deafness offers an opening to a world that the hearing cannot access.
When the blind man in John’s Gospel goes to the religious leaders to affirm his healing and tell them about Jesus, they will have nothing to do with him. “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” they ask.
Once again, the Scriptures point to the unlikely as the recipients of God’s favor. From the blind beggar man to the young shepherd boy David, seen in the first reading, God’s favor doesn’t rest on the healthy, the wealthy, or, in David’s case, the more-favored granted by age and experience.
Instead, Samuel is told to make his selection of a leader not from his appearance or lofty stature, because “not as man sees does God see.”
In the Gospel reading, we encounter a messiah who could never be mistaken for a prosperity preacher. Instead he provides light to the most unlikely of this world.

Peter Feuerherd is director of Communications for the Diocese of Camden and associate publisher of the Catholic Star Herald.