Lectionary meditation: Lent 4

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41

"Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you." - Ephesians 5:14b

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s you might have the same reaction as I to this passage. Sleeper, awake! My mind flashes first to the startling blue eyes of Paul Atrides and I hear the words: "The sleeper has awoken!" Yes, Frank Herbert's beloved epic: Dune. I grew up watching the movie version, both repulsed and fascinated by the characters; and I sat in trembling awe of Shihalude.

In Herbert's world Paul's eyes were opened by the water of life, and he saw the world as it truly was for the first time. That sight gave him power, it made him a man who lived in the world but was not of the world. The change, those startling blue eyes, was outward and visible, but it was the inward invisible change that mattered. It was the inner transformation that changed his life, and the course of the world. He became one with the great worm, he became a god-bearer.

Does Dune seem a strange topic for a lectionary meditation or sermon? Perhaps, yet often our fiction is the place where we wrestle with the deepest of truths. Our fiction has become modern myth. What ancient peoples explored in religious story we spin into tales of star ships and alien worlds. But the issues we seek to master, the knowledge we seek to impart are much the same.

This week God speaks to us of sleepers, and of sight. In the old testament reading God chides Samuel for his human sight, for judging the sons of Jesse by human standards. Samuel sees their strength, or their handsome mien, or their proud carriage and he makes certain assumptions. Had Samuel made the choice he would have anointed the human choice, the eldest son in all his worldly strength. But God sees the inner power of men and he chooses David, the youngest. Fair of face perhaps, but certainly not the intimidating kingly man his older brothers might have seemed.

Samuel trusts the voice and vision of God. He closes his own human eyes and becomes alive, awake with the knowledge of God. Only then does he see David, and know him. Just so the gospel story this week where sight and blindness, sleepers and those who have awoken merge and shift. Jesus turns the world on its head. Herbert would say, perhaps, that he makes the desert bloom.

In the days of this story those born disabled, either blind or deaf or dumb, we assumed accursed by God. Everyone knew that such a one suffered for the sins of their parents, or sins they themselves committed before their birth. They were pitied, outcast, and ostracized. Their families even felt the brunt of such treatment for surely the blindness of their child pointed a finger of blame into the heart of their own lives. Yet Jesus tells us such a thing is anathema to God. He makes mud, bathes the blind man's eyes, and gives him sight.

Mud, it is resurrection is it not? We are dust, and to dust we shall return. But Jesus makes the dust of the earth moist and alive with water and breath, for such is spit. The Christ, is remaking creation to heal the hurt of humanity. Christ indeed offers a second birth into a world where our eyes have been opened; where the startling brightness of our souls can shine forth from those newly opened eyes; where, like the blind man, the world may not even recognize us, so transformed have we become.

In the movie re-imagining of Dune the world, represented by the Emperor and House Harkonen cannot accept this new thing that is happening. They cling blindly to their old weapons. They hide behind walls and canons and instruments of death. But of course life breaks in from that frightening desert, regardless. It overwhelms the old blind ways. And we, who are watching, sit on the edge of our seats though we know there can be only one outcome. The desert, the awakened, life must prevail.

The Pharisees, the priests, all the people of that town see with human eyes. They see with the eyes of Adam and Eve, opened to perceive sin. Christ offers another kind of sight, a grafting of our sight with God's. Christ offers grace and the awakening it brings. But those in this story that represent the established order of the world see only their own fear, only the laws given for human weakness. Offered the water of life they refuse it and turn instead to violence and intimidation. Driving out, at last, the miracle in their midst.

It is, in the end, the same story we can find at the heart of Dune. It is a story about choice, the choice to see different, the choice to awaken to a new way of being, the choice to accept the divine spark we all carry. What Jesus offers is not easy. He makes resurrection from dust, but the healing he offers does not insulate us from danger or fear. It does not turn the once blind man's life into paradise. In fact, awakened and sighted the healed man ends up back where he began. And yet Christ finds him again. Those who see with human eyes reject and cast out, but God searches out again and again.

There is the hope for us, that our eyes might be opened, that we might be awakened to God's presence in our midst. And that we might know that no matter what God will ever seek us out and find us.

"Sleeper, awake!"