11th January 2017

Jesus would have been fined in Hurstville if he had lived in our day. The rules are clear. No spitting! No, not even into the gutter on a rainy day. Not even when you find a fly in your spring roll. Not even when you’ve got some flu but not a tissue. One wrong ‘ptui’ and you can be fined $110 on the spot. Lucky then for Jesus that he performed his miracles in another town and in another age!

There was man, we are told, who was blind from birth. And Jesus, in a scene that is full of references to the days of creation, spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the blind man’s eyes. Then told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. Which the man did, and came home seeing!

The story of course is not some pretty moral about the need to wash dirty images from our eyes, nor a superhero saga where Jesus is some greater-than-Dynamo magician. The story simply tells what happened when our Creator walked the earth in flesh, and blessed and cured a broken man, and showed himself to be the Light of the world. And O for more of that Light in our city! Hurstville may well be a saliva-free zone, but as yet, there is no law against shining. And no fine for believing that Jesus can brighten the eyes of those who walk our city’s streets.

DM 11^th January 2017