SPLAT!
James Cathcart
January 14, 2024
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John 9: 1-12 (NRSVA)
1 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ 3 Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbours and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ 9 Some were saying, ‘It is he.’ Others were saying, ‘No, but it is someone like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ 10 But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ 11 He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, “Go to Siloam and wash.” Then I went and washed and received my sight.’ 12 They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’
Minding your own business and then
SPLAT!
Jesus, brings mud and chaos, and new light streaming in.
A man — unable to see from birth and unjustly considered an object of suspicion (‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’) — finds his life turned upside down.
Upside down and covered in mud.
What can we take from this? That encounters with Jesus can sometimes leave us upside down and covered in mud, grinning, and a little confused?
That sometimes Jesus intervenes in our lives through a splat?
Two thousand years ago Jesus acted with a splat. He spoke volumes through the medium of mud.
And Jesus still acts and speaks to us in myriad ways. Sometimes through mud and often with a splat! Jesus calls out to us through all of life and all the mud. The mud of exercise, the mud of toil, the mud of adventure, the mud of our treks, the mud of our slogs.
Prayer:
Dear God,
We come before you
splattered by the mud
of work, play and travel.
Speckeld in mud
and flecked with grace,
we come ready
for transformation.
Amen.
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