Hello, my friends,
Sitting in my office writing this, I am overwhelmed by sunlight pouring in through the windows. It’s a small consolation, given I am still adjusting to the time change. I never adapt well to time changes, but I am not alone. On the brighter side of things, the clock in my car now tells me the right time!
Lately, I have been thinking of things in the past. Those things that I have done and those things that I left undone. However, the things that I have done weigh heavier on me. Memories are funny, and it is sometimes unclear why we have them. For me, the sounds of spring and the lengthening daylight remind me of past springs and winters, and this time connects them. Though I often prefer to avoid what I remember. I am reminded that remembering with discomfort tells me I have grown from the past – if there were mistakes, I have owned them. We do what we can at the time with what we know and what we have available to us.
Regrets from the past can lock us into a difficult present. In last Sunday’s gospel reading, when Jesus encountered the Samaritan Woman at the Well, she was locked into a difficult present because of her past. A past that she only knew fully, but others took delight in judging as if they lived it. She came to the Well at noon to avoid the disapproving gaze of others.
Jesus offers her a bridge to unlock the pain of her inner world. He asks, “Give me a drink.” She is startled that someone would talk to her. When memories of the past or present trap us, we strengthen our prison bars with our despair. So when Jesus reveals her history, her reaction is not shame but relief. Finally, here was someone listening and not judging. Being heard makes a difference in our inner world. It allows us to emerge from the darkness into the light.
In tomorrow’s Sunday Gospel, we will hear of a man blind from birth healed by Jesus. A man whom the townspeople had ignored because of his infirmities, the blind man never saw those who scorned him. But before he heals the blind man, Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world.” He is the light by which we are given sight and the ability to see ourselves through the eyes of grace. As the woman at the Well had been known and in that knowing was freed, the blind man’s faith in Jesus, knowing that he would be healed, restored the light of vision to him.
When we look at our past from the point of the present, we are like the woman at the Well revealed by Jesus, but in the revelation, we see ourselves differently and like the blind man for the first time. Memories are not meant to trap us but to remind us of where we have started and how far we have come. God’s abiding grace surrounds us at every step of the journey, and Christ reaches out to us, guiding us gently to his father’s Kingdom.
God’s Blessing,
Pastor Nicolas
