“If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now you say “We see!” your sin remains.

Quite a long gospel reading and quite a powerful punch line!  There is a very powerful message in today’s readings and I’d like to spend a few minutes with you reflecting on them, but since it was so long I will keep my reflection a bit shorter. 

Not like the country preacher who was famous for his long, long sermons.  One day as a man walked by the little country church on a Sunday morning, he saw an older man coming out ahead of the crowd.  He thought it was a little early for the service to be over so he asked the older man with surprise, “Has he finished?”  The older man said, “Oh, he finished what he was saying a while ago, he just doesn’t know when to stop!”

So I hope we can get to the point a little faster than that today.  Why has the church chosen these readings today for the second scrutiny of our RCIA candidates?  Or maybe first we should remind ourselves what the second scrutiny is? 

Many of you will have noticed, if you have a missalette that there were two sets of readings for today as there was last week, one for the normal fourth Sunday of Lent, and one for the RCIA program called the second scrutiny.  The word “scrutiny” literally means to look over something carefully, and so today is our second chance to “look over” the candidates who have come forward to be welcomed into our church or to complete their full initiation into our church through the Sacraments of initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, that they have not received yet.

We are blessed at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea to have a number of candidates who have come forward for the RCIA program, and it is our duty to welcome them and pray for them as they continue their journey to spiritual awakening and Communion with God’s church.

When we look them over today, it is hopefully to get to know them, to recognize them in our midst, to welcome them and share in the joy of their discovery and perhaps even to rediscover the power of our own faith through their example.  Hopefully, it is not to cross-examine them as the Pharisees did to the man born blind who had been given his sight by Jesus.

Those Pharisees represented the power of the Church at the time and they had forgotten about the truth in their desire to hold on to their own authority.  Faced with an awesome miracle in their very midst, they looked for ways to deny it because of the threat that Jesus represented to the status quo.  Having been blessed with sight their whole lives, they now kept their eyes firmly closed when the most important thing to see was right in front of them.

In some ways, our RCIA candidates are like the man born blind in today’s gospel, living their lives in the best way they knew how but somehow shut out of the depth of living that knowing Jesus would bring them, and now Jesus has reached out to them, beckoned them and opened their eyes to what it means to live a life of faith beyond merely what their good intentions could achieve before, rising up from mere survival to fully living.

But remember what Jesus said about the man born blind.  He was not born that way due to sin, but so that the glory of God may be seen by us.  Likewise our future new parishioners were not deprived of our faith in their earlier lives because of their sins but because they too can show us the glory of God’s goodness and mercy as he reaches out to everyone.  As they learn of our faith and grow in our faith after they are welcomed into the community on the night of the Easter vigil, their experience may cause them to look at our church with fresh eyes and ask some awkward questions about what we are doing, just as the man in the gospel challenged the Pharisees.

Jesus calls us as a community to keep our eyes open to his message, even when it may come from someone newly joined to our church, and to have the courage to question what we do, with the same eyes wide open in faith.  We need to be challenged by our new members, not challenge them, and we need to have our faith rekindled by their example.

Each of us has an area in our lives where we have chosen to close our eyes and shut out the light of Christ, to pretend that certain things we know are true don’t apply to us.  Is it cheating on our taxes now that spring is here?  Is it disobeying our parents to win points with our friends?  Is it letting the Share Life envelope, that is so crucial to help those in need, pass by with a few dollars while we watch a thousand dollar multimedia entertainment system?  Just like the Pharisees, we will close our eyes and try to choose just what part of the truth we look at, ironically even as our RCIA candidates are opening theirs to see the whole truth.

How do we heed Jesus’ warning that if keep our eyes closed while we “say we see”, then we hold on to our sin?  One way is to join the RCIA as a sponsor.  You will not only learn a lot about your faith but you will be infected with the enthusiasm and joy of the candidates.  But especially, we can receive Jesus here in the Eucharist, so that he lives in us, and so that even when we try to close our eyes, His light will shine inside us and keep us facing the truth and keep us filled with the courage to act on the truth.