John 9:1-41 True Blindness
Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”
Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.”
He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “Sent”). The man went and washed—and saw.
Soon the town was buzzing. His relatives and those who year after year had seen him as a blind man begging were saying, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat here and begged?”
Others said, “It’s him all right!” But others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just looks like him.”
He said, “It’s me, the very one.”
They said, “How did your eyes get opened?”
“A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”
“So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
They marched the man to the Pharisees. This day when Jesus made the paste and healed his blindness was the Sabbath. The Pharisees grilled him again on how he had come to see. He said, “He put a clay paste on my eyes, and I washed, and now I see.”
Some of the Pharisees said, “Obviously, this man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath.”
Others countered, “How can a bad man do miraculous, God-revealing things like this?” There was a split in their ranks.
They came back at the blind man, “You’re the expert. He opened your eyes. What do you say about him?” He answered, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews didn’t believe it, didn’t believe the man was blind to begin with. So they called the parents of the man now bright-eyed with sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? So how is it that he now sees?”
His parents said, “We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he came to see—haven’t a clue about who opened his eyes. Why don’t you ask him? He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.” (His parents were talking like this because they were intimidated by the Jewish leaders, who had already decided that anyone who took a stand that this was the Messiah would be kicked out of the meeting place. That’s why his parents said, “Ask him. He’s a grown man.”)
They called the man back a second time—the man who had been blind—and told him, “Give credit to God. We know this man is an impostor.”
He replied, “I know nothing about that one way or the other. But I know one thing for sure: I was blind . . . I now see.”
They said, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
“I’ve told you over and over and you haven’t listened. Why do you want to hear it again? Are you so eager to become his disciples?”
With that they jumped all over him. “You might be a disciple of that man, but we’re disciples of Moses. We know for sure that God spoke to Moses, but we have no idea where this man even comes from.”
The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
They said, “You’re nothing but dirt! How dare you take that tone with us!” Then they threw him out in the street.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
The man said, “Point him out to me, sir, so that I can believe in him.”
Jesus said, “You’re looking right at him. Don’t you recognize my voice?”
“Master, I believe,” the man said, and worshiped him.
Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.”
Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”
Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”
This is a very long reading today. Usually when a reading is this long I will chop it down into a smaller, more digestible size – take just one piece and look at it instead of the whole, lengthy thing -- and I could have done that with this reading – focused just on the blind man and Jesus and the actual act of healing. But to my mind that is the smallest part of this story.
The writer of John’s gospel, whoever he or she may have been, has done a masterful piece of storytelling here. Less a story about Jesus and a blind man, this is a story about everyone else – and there is an extraordinary number of “Everyone Else’s” in this reading.
The healing itself is quite simple: Jesus meets a man born blind and heals him. The story is so lengthy because Everyone Else has to get involved. Everyone Else has an opinion and feels obligated to express it. Everyone Else can’t seem to manage to squish the story down to make it fit into their preconceived ideas of what could have happened, and so they want to fight about it.
Only two people were involved in the story – Jesus and the blind man. After it happened, the poor formerly-blind man was asked the same question over and over again, as if his questioners thought that by repeating their question they would finally get an answer they wanted to hear. But the healed man just kept saying the same thing: “I don’t know how it happened. I just know I used to be blind and now I am not blind.”
So then they ask each other. They ask the man’s parents, as if they should somehow know what happened. They ask people who chanced to be standing around the street that day. They ask everyone except the one person who might really know what happened and how it happened.
And everyone has an answer: It’s a fake; he’s a charlatan; it never happened; it’s a lie; we know Moses was of God but we don’t know anything about this guy – except that he has to be a fake.
The ONE suggestion that NO ONE appears to put forth here is, of course the true one, the “obvious” one, according to our meditation reading for today: That what just happened here, what they saw and experienced, was the hand of God at work among the people of God – right here, in this world. What they saw was God.
In this entire long reading the Pharisees, the authorities – the ones asking all the questions – do not speak to Jesus himself until the very end – and even then they don’t ask How or What. All they have to say to Jesus is “are you calling us blind?”
Until that one indignant, offended question at the end of the story – until then, only one person had spoken at all to Jesus…and that one had his eyes and his understanding opened so that he did, in truth, see.
There are so many people in this story: we start with the man himself, his relatives, and then “those who had seen him as a blind man; then we have “the Pharisees” who themselves appear to be divided as to what really happened – some saying “never happened” and those saying “something” happened; then back to the once-blind man; then his parents – then back to the man – finally throwing him out entirely because he insisted on telling the same story and wouldn’t change it to accommodate them. Jesus only gets a word in when some Pharisees overhear him talking to the man about those who pretend to see but are really blind.
So many people, so much running around and babbling, all in a desperate attempt to avoid having to say out loud what they know good and well just happened: There was a man who was blind and Jesus healed him.
We humans are capable of going to absolutely ridiculous lengths to deny what is right in front of us. Listen to a sports fan insisting that their bottom-of-the-basement team is going rise up and take it all at the last minute; listen to a politician insist that “I never said that” when it’s right there on tape and half the world has watched them “say that”. We see what we want – and we don’t see what we cannot willingly accept.
How often do we see God at work right here? How many times have we been excited about it? How many times have we told someone else – anyone else – about what we just witnessed? What we ourselves have experienced? Why is it so difficult to do this?
Why are we ready to say that blindness is God’s ‘fault’, while at the same time, our response to healing is so often ‘I don’t know’? Why are we so ready to ascribe devastation and loss to God’s agency but less willing to do the same with grace and blessing?
Are we any less blinded by our own preconceptions - our own carefully constructed narratives of how the world works? Why is it so hard for us to claim grace out loud?
The writer of John’s gospel, whoever he or she may have been, has done a masterful piece of storytelling here. Less a story about Jesus and a blind man, this is a story about everyone else – and there is an extraordinary number of “Everyone Else’s” in this reading.
The healing itself is quite simple: Jesus meets a man born blind and heals him. The story is so lengthy because Everyone Else has to get involved. Everyone Else has an opinion and feels obligated to express it. Everyone Else can’t seem to manage to squish the story down to make it fit into their preconceived ideas of what could have happened, and so they want to fight about it.
Only two people were involved in the story – Jesus and the blind man. After it happened, the poor formerly-blind man was asked the same question over and over again, as if his questioners thought that by repeating their question they would finally get an answer they wanted to hear. But the healed man just kept saying the same thing: “I don’t know how it happened. I just know I used to be blind and now I am not blind.”
So then they ask each other. They ask the man’s parents, as if they should somehow know what happened. They ask people who chanced to be standing around the street that day. They ask everyone except the one person who might really know what happened and how it happened.
And everyone has an answer: It’s a fake; he’s a charlatan; it never happened; it’s a lie; we know Moses was of God but we don’t know anything about this guy – except that he has to be a fake.
The ONE suggestion that NO ONE appears to put forth here is, of course the true one, the “obvious” one, according to our meditation reading for today: That what just happened here, what they saw and experienced, was the hand of God at work among the people of God – right here, in this world. What they saw was God.
In this entire long reading the Pharisees, the authorities – the ones asking all the questions – do not speak to Jesus himself until the very end – and even then they don’t ask How or What. All they have to say to Jesus is “are you calling us blind?”
Until that one indignant, offended question at the end of the story – until then, only one person had spoken at all to Jesus…and that one had his eyes and his understanding opened so that he did, in truth, see.
There are so many people in this story: we start with the man himself, his relatives, and then “those who had seen him as a blind man; then we have “the Pharisees” who themselves appear to be divided as to what really happened – some saying “never happened” and those saying “something” happened; then back to the once-blind man; then his parents – then back to the man – finally throwing him out entirely because he insisted on telling the same story and wouldn’t change it to accommodate them. Jesus only gets a word in when some Pharisees overhear him talking to the man about those who pretend to see but are really blind.
So many people, so much running around and babbling, all in a desperate attempt to avoid having to say out loud what they know good and well just happened: There was a man who was blind and Jesus healed him.
We humans are capable of going to absolutely ridiculous lengths to deny what is right in front of us. Listen to a sports fan insisting that their bottom-of-the-basement team is going rise up and take it all at the last minute; listen to a politician insist that “I never said that” when it’s right there on tape and half the world has watched them “say that”. We see what we want – and we don’t see what we cannot willingly accept.
How often do we see God at work right here? How many times have we been excited about it? How many times have we told someone else – anyone else – about what we just witnessed? What we ourselves have experienced? Why is it so difficult to do this?
Why are we ready to say that blindness is God’s ‘fault’, while at the same time, our response to healing is so often ‘I don’t know’? Why are we so ready to ascribe devastation and loss to God’s agency but less willing to do the same with grace and blessing?
Are we any less blinded by our own preconceptions - our own carefully constructed narratives of how the world works? Why is it so hard for us to claim grace out loud?
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