Dear Cathedral Family,
This Sunday’s gospel is another powerful story of personal encounter with Jesus and the transformation that this brings. When Jesus meets a man blind from birth, the disciples ask whose sin is responsible for his blindness. Jesus explains that the man’s blindness is not the result of anyone’s sin but exists in order that God’s works might be revealed in him. Jesus gives the man sight and tells the wondering crowd that he came that ALL might see. In the person of Jesus, God’s ongoing revelation has come into the world.
Although most of us have not known what being physically blind is like, we have experienced beginning to see things in the world around us that we were previously “blind to.” We become aware of realities in human life that we were unaware of before. Once we see such things, it is difficult to “unsee” them.
Our time with Rite One worship during Lent has given us the opportunity to revisit earlier liturgical expressions of the church, and in so doing, perhaps we have been allowed to see some of the changes time has brought. Perhaps you have seen some things that you were not aware of before.
For the last two Sundays of Lent, we will return to using the Nicene Creed as we usually say it together. This is the normative, or first, option presented in Rite One in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. I invite you to compare the two versions, as they appear together on pages 326-328. Read them slowly and attend to the thoughts and questions that rise in you. What do you see, in both, that you did not see before?
See you Sunday.
Faithfully,
Beverly+