John 9:1-41 (Liturgical Reading for the Fourth Sunday in Lent)
John’s gospel is my favorite one – not to throw shade on the others – but as I reflect on the gravitational pulls of the gospels in my life, John’s is the strongest. I think John reminds me of a college professor who takes a system of thinking and implodes it based on the very principals the system claims to uphold OR he takes the wide-angle view, while subtly (and not so subtly) making the arguments which expand the reader’s understanding of Jesus and of God.
On the surface, the passage tells of a man born blind who regains his sight through the miraculous work of God via Jesus. The sub-text explores pervasive religious and cultural blindness and the stubborn dogmatism perpetuating it.
According to the passage, for these people in this place the world contained sinners and not sinners: a dichotomy safely placing people into “us” and “them.” Sinners were outcasts, abandoned by God and better left alone. The not sinners were disciples of Moses’ and the Law Moses received from God. The not sinners observed that Law to the letter and God blessed them.
The disciples, the Pharisees, the neighbors and the parents lived in the world of the synagogue and the rules and biases thereof. Throughout the passage, each set of people get caught up on “sin” and “sinners” – who is one, who isn’t one, how one becomes a “sinner,” what a “sinner” can do, what a “sinner” can’t do, how a “sinner” is punished, how a “sinner” is separated from God or the synagogue, etc. Even the blind man uses this paradigm to frame the character of Jesus, but the Pharisees parlay the logic and drive him out of the synagogue.
Now separated from the only world he’s ever known, even though he existed on the outskirts of that world, Jesus finds the now sight-filled man and – as a theme of John repeats – asks if the man believes in him, the Son of Man, Jesus.
In somewhat cryptic language, Jesus then speaks of seeing and not seeing and his mission in the world: The ones who feel around in the dark for something they can recognize, who stand in the street begging for their daily bread, who feel their need and want as vividly as they experience their blindness – these will see. The ones gloating in well-defined colors and shapes, who step around the potholes, who can see what they want and take it, who live by only what they see – these will be blind.
Finally, Jesus ends by speaking again in the Pharisee’s religious language, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Their certainty IS their blindness – their pride, their sin.
We begin and we end, but we have a promise of eternal life. We are hungry, we are thirsty, we are blind. Who recognizes all of this about us? Jesus – the Bread of Life, the Living Water, the One who gives sight.
May the practice of blindness – of not having the answers – of not living in polarities, bring you to the One who gives us eyes to see.
Photo credits: Julien Harneis/flickr found on https://www.networx.com/article/5-marvelous-uses-for-mud
