Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

Rightly did Jesus indic­ate in the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mat­thew (5:17) that his mis­sion was not to abol­ish neither the Law nor the Proph­ets but, to ful­fil them. Such ful­fil­ment includes the cor­rec­tion of wrong beliefs and theo­logy of Juda­ism by then and of Chris­tian­ity today. In this Sunday Gos­pel, John chapter nine (John 9) is meant to show that things are not always the way they look and the way we think. As Isai­ah (55:8) rightly poin­ted out, God’s ways are quite dif­fer­ent from the human way. In John 4:5–42, Jesus suc­ceeded in mak­ing the Samar­it­ans under­stand that dis­crim­in­a­tion is not of God, but of the evil one. This he did by enga­ging the Samar­it­an woman in a con­ver­sa­tion that later involved the entire Samar­it­ans of Sychar and cul­min­ated in believ­ing in Jesus and recog­niz­ing him as the Mes­si­ah. Their joy and faith were so intense that they invited Jesus to stay with them in their town. Sur­pris­ingly, Jesus spent two days with them before pro­ceed­ing to Jer­u­s­alem. Hav­ing giv­en the Samar­it­ans who recog­nized him as the mes­si­ah the liv­ing water, Jesus now con­fronts the Jews to des­troy the bridge that is pre­vent­ing them from par­ti­cip­at­ing in the liv­ing water. Will he suc­ceed? The end of the story will clarify.

Who sinned?

“As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His dis­ciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his par­ents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1–2). When Jesus told the Jews that their fath­er Abra­ham rejoiced at the thought of see­ing his day, and that he saw it and was glad, they wondered how Jesus could have seen Abra­ham when he was not even fifty years old. At such con­clu­sion, Jesus told them that before Abra­ham was born, he was already (John 8:56–58). On hear­ing this blas­phemy (in their under­stand­ing), they wanted to stone him, but Jesus slipped away from their pres­ence (John 8:59). As Jesus walked away from the temple premise, he saw this blind men­dic­ant. The dis­ciples con­fron­ted him with this inter­est­ing inter­rog­a­tion – Is this man blind due to the sins of his par­ents or his own sin? But how can.…

Conclusion – What about us?

The dis­ciples asked Jesus who sinned that the man was born blind. In your own case, who sinned that you are always under­go­ing series of agony, tor­ture, sick­ness, hard­ship and dif­fi­cult moments? Who is respons­ible? Left for the dis­ciples, they would have accused the par­ents of the blind man as being respons­ible for his blind­ness. In your own case, who are you point­ing accus­ing fin­ger at? You have con­sul­ted so many who claim to be proph­ets and vis­ion­ar­ies, tal­en­ted in spir­itu­al things except your mater­i­al prob­lem, and they have assured you that your fore-fath­ers, your moth­er, your fath­er, broth­er, sis­ter, wife, hus­band, chil­dren, friend, fam­ily mem­ber, your neigh­bour, or one of your rela­tions is respons­ible for what is hap­pen­ing to you. Be very care­ful of cheap proph­ecy. There is every pos­sib­il­ity that what is hap­pen­ing to you is an oppor­tun­ity for God’s work to be mani­fes­ted in you and through you. Again.…

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the Fourth Sunday of Lent is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 179–190. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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