Chris Breslin—Year A Lent 4
Anthony: Alright, let’s transition to our next pericope of the month. It’s John 9:1–41. Again, because of the length, we’ll read just a portion of the text. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fourth Sunday in Easter Preparation, March 15.
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.” 13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17 So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” 18 The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, 21 but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” 25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out. 35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
“I was blind. And now I see.” The religious leaders questioned who was to blame for the man being blind. No one was to be blamed. Was that type of blaming game isolated to that culture or do you see it at work today? And that’s like an understating question. And if so, how does this blame and shame game persist? And what is the solution?
Chris: Yeah.
Anthony: What do we do with that?
Chris: And can I say that it’s strangely heartening that, like this sort of stuff, we didn’t invent this sort of stuff or that it’s not that it happens in a analog culture, like you can totally imagine a confrontation like this in this like AI and social media, deep fake age, right, where there’s just so much suspicion and disputation of what is real.
I think there are a couple of things happening. There’s the blame of it all. There’s an attempt at a simple answer to horrible suffering. It seems that Jesus’ disciples need to be “un-discipled” from these old ways of thinking.
Anthony: Well said.
Chris: Yeah. Matthew’s gospel has that formula. “You have heard it said, but I say to you” — this might be like a Johannine version of that. Jesus clears the way of old thinking off the table, a way that has no room for God’s presence and work, but only a zero-sum blame game of who screwed up. And Jesus resets the terms with just a more expansive, mysterious, complicated, and, like, theocentric, God-centered view of the world. They want an either / or. Jesus gives them a neither /and. I don’t know if that’s how that works.
Anthony: Yeah, I like that.
Chris: But I think the second thing that is happening is the encounter with the religious gatekeepers. This seems so social media coded to me. They are looking for a way to trap him. They want to get him to say something that can be clipped so that he can be disputed, dismissed, vilified, disqualified. Again, related to our theme of who can see and hear, those who can, and those who refuse to. If you already “know” that a man can’t be healed, you just have a few options.
Your options are like the disciples, to try to explain it, and blame for it, which that works. And that can be satisfying until that blame comes for you when something bad happens. Another option is you can deny it like the Pharisees attempt to, or then that like denial shifts as denial often does and then they begin to recognize that this “impossible skill” happened, in that it has dark causes; you vilify it. So, those seem to be the ways that blame is operating here, and I think still operates more generally.
Anthony: Yeah. It seems to me when anything happens in our society, that’s the first question we often ask, “Who’s to blame?” We’ve got to be able to set it at somebody’s feet so we can understand what is happening.
And I just love this guy’s response. His testimony is not to wrangle over theology. “I just know what happened to me. I can’t tell you much about this guy, but I was blind and now I see.” What can we learn from the witness of this man?
Chris: Yeah. Of all those previous options and the way that they’re wrestling with this upturning of the way things are, there’s this guy standing over to the side, and imagine him just like ogling at the colors and the shapes and the shadows and the faces and the details and the beauty that he never saw but now can see.
Anthony: Yeah
Chris: Like, I think we learned that, like talking about and bandying about ideas of seeing and perceiving pale in comparison to the indisputable experience of a man who was encountered, who was touched, who was healed, who had things revealed to him. You circle back to the start of the passage, he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. And Jesus says, as long as I’m in the world, I’m the light of the world. And it is that light that is illuminating for this man.
Anthony: I don’t know if you’ve seen the videos of people who had been born deaf and with today’s technology are able to hear.
Chris: Yeah, that’s right.
Anthony: And people who have been colorblind with special glasses can see in colors they could only previously try to imagine. It brings me to tears every time something like that happens. What a wonderful thing the Lord has done here. And I appreciate you just bringing it up, like the astonishment of what that man was experiencing and how that impacted his testimony. I don’t think he ever stopped talking about it. How could you?
Chris: How could you? And again, not to rank healings or encounters, but there’s just something so much more vivid and, like, whole-being-related to gaining a whole sense. Again, someone who is immobilized by leg injury or something like, absolutely — those stories in the gospels they jump up and leap about like calves. That’s so cool. This man is having his whole way of being in the world completely changed in a way that seems analogous to what Jesus is telling Nicodemus. “You need to be born again. You need to come into this world again as for the first time.” It feels like that’s a little bit of what that man is experiencing.
Anthony: Yeah. And yet Pastor Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, no eye has seen, no ears heard, no mind can even comprehend the things that are in store. Like even with this man’s sight, there’s just still so much.