I've been trying something new this Lent. I'm not preaching, but I'm offering some thoughts here that may help those who are preaching and those who will be listening to sermons this Sunday to preview the "thick" texts we've been getting from the fourth gospel. For the fourth Sunday in Lent, that gospel is John 9:1-41.
Rabbi, who sinned here? This man or his parents? In one form or another, human beings have been asking this question throughout history. We yearn for simple cause-and-effect answers to the very difficult question of human suffering. And so inquiring minds want to know, and particularly, people of faith want to know.
Notice that the question doesn’t come from the crowds or from the scribes and Pharisees. The question is posed by Jesus’ disciples. It's asked by those who have left all things behind to follow him. Like Job before them, they are committed people of faith yearning to understand the problem of human suffering.
Why was this man born blind? Or why was that woman down the street cured of her cancer, but my father was not? Why was my child diagnosed with cystic fibrosis? Why did that tsunami strike where and when it did? Is this all some kind of punishment?
I adore John's Gospel but I find it the most challenging of the four to preach on because it is so mystical. There is more packed in there than a fifteen-minute homily can tackle. But it seems to me that this is the great theological question and it cannot be ignored on this day, whatever else the preacher may say. We should notice that although Jesus almost always answers questions with a question, he doesn't do that here. He leaves no doubt. He responds clearly and directly: neither this man, nor his parents sinned. Jesus rejects the notion that disease is some kind of punishment for sin.
Why was this man born blind? We don’t know. All that we can say with any amount of certainty is that in this man’s healing, God’s glory is revealed—if only we have eyes to see.
The healing itself occurs in a fairly straightforward
matter: Jesus spits on the ground, makes a little mud pie from the sand and his
saliva, spreads that mud on the guy’s eyes, and then tells him to go wash it
off. The man does so. God’s grace is so amazing that this man, who once was
blind, now sees.
But the healing story quickly is left behind, and instead what we have to unpack is this conflict over the practice of keeping the Sabbath holy. In this case we’re talking about the accepted societal practices around keeping the Sabbath holy. The poor guy who was blind, and now sees, finds himself at the center of a media storm and ultimately a criminal investigation. One can only imagine if CNN and Fox News had been around how this scandal would have unfolded with a twenty-four hour news cycle. As it is, we get to see that even without modern technology, Middle Eastern villages in the first-century do just fine at passing along the big story of the day.
No one wants to believe this guy who now sees is the one they’ve all known to be blind from birth. “I’m the man,” he insists. And they keep asking him, “but how did this happen?” Notice his frustration, and notice how in the midst of all the shouting, his voice gets lost. Notice how his parents get dragged in and interviewed by the media. It’s a real frenzy, and the guy’s whole life is disrupted as Jesus becomes the real story. Jesus is pushing their buttons, and it seems to be apparent that he wants to rock that boat. He is saying that doing the work of the Kingdom takes precedence over everything else. Jesus is reminding people that the Sabbath is given for humans, in order to make life more abundant, not so that humans can become slaves to it.
In today’s gospel reading there are a whole lot of competing agendas. While it’s easy for Christians to caricature and scapegoat the Pharisees, the truth is that they are sincere people trying to keep the faith. Their sin, however, may be in their certitude that they know and see all that there is to see. And in their vigilant desire to keep Sabbath holy, they are blind to the transformation that is unfolding before their very eyes.
This gospel reading is only initially about the healing of a blind man. In fact, it is about exposing certitude—especially religious certitude—for what it is: a form of idolatry and pride. When we are absolutely certain that we have it all down and that we grasp the whole truth and that we have a clear command of all the right information and that our perspective is “pure”—it is precisely then that we may be most blind to what is unfolding right before our very eyes.
