This isn’t a story of healing, but of spiritual blindness. A story about skepticism and the rhetorical knots we tie ourselves in.
A story about seeing the truth
Lent 4A | John 9:1-41
The centerpiece of the story has to be the miracle, right?
A stranger walks up, gives a man sight, and then keeps on walking? You know that would headline the local news. The national media definitely picks it up. And by the end of the day, we’re all talking about a man, blind from birth, who now can see.
And yet…you know the rest of the story would quickly become the story. How does that man have such power? Did it really happen? Considering all of the images of Jesus and Mary burned into toast, we’d be forgiven for being skeptical.
In “the real world” the other stuff always becomes the story. It’s all questions about the healer and the man with sight; what they’re planning; what’s their angle?
The giving of sight makes up so little of this story. So much more is spent trying to vilify Jesus. In a sense, they make the story about them.
And because it is a familiar enough experience, we should take a second to look at just what they are saying.
The cost of skepticism
Let’s think about the decisions these religious leaders make like a river that branches. Each decision is like picking a direction at the fork. These decisions will lead to new decisions exclusive to that branch of the river. So in a sense, the first decision they make has profound outcomes on their eventual destination.
And much like a river, if you pick wrongly, you can’t just paddle back. The current is going to take you forward.
So it starts with those people who see the man for the first time after he gains sight. Of course, they’re skeptical! Why wouldn’t they be? Here’s a guy who was blind and now he’s not. So what is the choice before them:
- Either a miracle has happened or
- This isn’t the same dude.
Neither of these choices makes any sense.
So they take him to the Pharisees.
The man tells the Pharisees what happened and they’re like:
- Either a man of God broke Sabbath Law or
- This is not a man of God.
Of course, they discount the first option! No messiah would do that. So Jesus must not be from God.
And if Jesus is not from God, then neither is this man. He must be a liar.
So they take him to his Parents.
They confront his parents. By asking two questions:
- Is this your son who is not blind and
- Was he really blind from birth?
The parents, frightened by the authority of the Pharisees, give a non-answer. They won’t vouch for their son or admit anything. They suggest he speak for himself.
So they confront the man a second time.
They tell the man to stop giving glory to the sinner posing as a holy man—give it instead to God!
And the man’s response is to not speak to any of the theology. Just the facts as he knows them. He was born blind. A man put mud on his face. He washed it off. And now he can see.
The Pharisees declare the man a sinner and drive him out. And the man finds Jesus.
For a story about healing, this sure has a lot of politics.
See how the Pharisees’ assumptions keep driving them away from the truth? And if we’re being honest, we ought to admit that they aren’t making irrational assumptions. They are following the logic they were taught. A man can’t be from God if he’s healing on the Sabbath! Therefore we can’t trust him. So we should have some sympathy for their plight.
And yet…let us also take note of how far removed they are from the truth. Their distrust, logical or not, has led them time and again into antagonism, oppression, and fits of confusion. Their fowl tempers and use of authority lead the parents to dishonesty. Their river isn’t taking them to justice.
We also have a man whose story remains true and consistent throughout. He doesn’t lie or try to get out of responsibility. Nor does he treat the Pharisees with deference. He simply tells them the truth over and over.
A man came, rubbed mud on my eyes, I washed it off, and now I can see.
He is not calling the man the Messiah. Just saying what there is to say about him. And saying it honestly.
So, can we see how this story about Jesus giving a man sight is also about true spiritual sight and spiritual blindness?
From the start
This story kicks off with this question as Jesus’s disciples make a false assumption. This sets the stage for what will follow.
They see this man who is blind. And because he was blind from birth, they assume that God did that on purpose. So therefore either he is full of sin or his parents are. That’s the choice. There’s gotta be a reason, and since being blind is seen as bad, then they must have done something to deserve it.
We see this logic all the time. And it seeps into our politics and daily lives. So it must be that people are poor because they deserve to be poor. The same logic used by a pastor who said that flooding would destroy the sinful…and then his house was flooded. [I have to admit, I kinda liked that one.]
But the disciples start with a distorting assumption. That misfortune must be the product of sin. So in this way, they are as blind to the truth as the Pharisees.
And therefore, when Jesus responds by saying that this man “was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” he is NOT talking about a manipulative and vengeful God. This man reveals the truth in the midst of spin.
The Truth
We’re doing a lot of talking these days about truth. Integrity. Authority. Hope. We’re wrestling with a pandemic and we’re all trying to figure out how best to make it work.
And it seems like there’s a lot of internal logic to what each of us is arguing and wrestling with. It makes sense from the shoes we’re wearing (or let’s be honest, the PJs and slippers and fuzzy blankets).
But what we see in the gospel is an example of how easily the one man accepted that God was doing a new thing and how hard it was for the rest of the people to believe it. Not because the man was lying, but because their own lie detectors were broken. Because they didn’t want to believe what they were seeing.
Maybe we need to cast ourselves as the disciples to reexamine our present world with this new information. So we aren’t like those religious leaders who bully their way into certainty to maintain power.
But instead, we look for those moments in which the truth comes through. That the things which were old are being made new. Testimonies to the truth are received and believed.
That all of us are made for love and hope and new creations. Even now. Especially now.