Lent 4

John 9:1-41
As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 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, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
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?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 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.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 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.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 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.” 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 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 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.” 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. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 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.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 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?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
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.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

There is nothing I love more than a well-told story.

Perhaps it goes back to my early days of story reading and hearing and telling with my dad at bedtime when I was a little girl. Or, maybe I can attribute it to the fact that God created us for laughter and tears, imagination and wonder, all of which good stories can invoke with just words.

And while the Bible is full of stories that help us to relate to God, that tell us of God’s love for us, the gospel lesson we have for today is an extraordinary work of storytelling: the story of God’s participation in our world, the story of justice cracking through the thoroughly bricked and mortared halls of injustice, and the presence of God in Christ, helping us to see that the things we think will never happen have already happened and are waiting to be revealed to us as soon as we get through waiting impatiently for God to jump as high as we tell God to go.

You see, there was this one time, when Jesus and the others were “walking along.” Actually, they had probably been running away from an attempted stoning that had just taken place on the opposite page—and at the temple! That was a pretty weird story. But I digress.

Where was I? Oh, yes—the whole lot of them were walking along. Just sitting there, minding his own business—really, who else was going to engage this man in conversation, or life for that matter?—was this blind man. He didn’t ask for them to stop—no, Jesus just started teaching. Can’t you just imagine what it was like to travel with him—every single thing, person, or situation they encountered was a teachable moment. Like rocks on the ground—“I remember another time I came across some rocks that looked a good bit like these right here. Stop me if I’ve already told you this, but Satan came along and…”

But that is in another gospel. And I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes, the blind man minding his own business. Jesus performed a home remedy on him, and it worked. Can’t you just imagine the staging of it? A guy who can’t see meets another group of guys. One guy spits on the ground and then plays with it, smears it on the one who can’t see, and tells him where to go to wash it off. There’s no conversation about it except instruction. The blind one doesn’t really even ask for help. The disciples spot him and he becomes an instant parable. John’s parables, you know, are not told in third person. They happen in real live action.

So people notice that this guy is not blind anymore. He tells the story of how it happened, but no one believes him. Sounds like the makings of at the least a good made-for-TV-movie, right? Even the antagonists are not of one mind. A good God-person wouldn’t be betraying the intent of the law by disregarding the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, would he? After all, the leaders of the Temple decide what is and is not holy when it comes to the Sabbath, and this is not. But who else besides Almighty God could do this?

Maybe it’s all a hoax. So they bring in his parents to prove that he was, in fact, blind before. They can see that he can see; they just can’t see how he can see. Maybe the boy’s mama can shed some light.

Nope—fear is a powerful thing. “The deciders of what’s holy or not are asking me to tell them whether this whole thing is right or wrong?” says Mama. “Not in a million years am I getting mixed up in that!”

So they bring the man, himself, back and ask how he regained his sight. Do they have a hearing problem, too, he wonders? “I just told you what happened. I know it sounds unbelievable; no one has ever done this before. But seriously—I’m just telling you what I felt, heard, and saw. He spat in the mud; he rubbed it on my eyes; he Sent me to wash them; and now I have come to show myself to you so that you will declare that I am now clean. So could you just get that over with and let me go?”

Nope.

“Ok,” says the one formerly known as blind. “I don’t know what to say about him. You’re the scholars; you decide. All I know is that I have been changed by this man. And I’ve told you how twice. If you will not see that, then maybe you are the blind ones!”

Oops—he didn’t really say that, did he? I made that little part up. See what I did? I called them blind, but the seeing man did not do that. He just lost his patience with their non-ability to see goodness when it stared them in the face. Luckily he didn’t have to rely on whether or not they recognized his healing. Jesus straightened it all out in the end by revealing himself as the Son of Man to his new friend. And the new friend worshipped him. What a nice ending!

Except that wasn’t the end. You know that happy/proud/almost judgmental feeling you get in the story when the hero goes back to stick it to the antagonist? Well, here it comes: Jesus is the one who calls the Pharisees blind. He just walks straight up to them, looks them in the face, disregards their place of holiness, and spits their own judgment right back into their faces. Blindness caused by sin? Not quite. That guy wasn’t being punished, and neither were his parents, he said. That’s not the kind of thing sin does to you. Sin removes your ability to see God’s presence in the world. Sin makes you unable to distinguish who it is that calls you: the Good Shepherd, or the Accuser. Sin makes you do things like bare false witness to the glory of God. And y’all better watch it: because you look for ways to punish others, that sin is heaped back on your own head, covering your eyes and making you unable to see what God is up to all around you. Shame on you.

It was a commonly held belief of that time that disability rose from someone’s sin—either the sin of the disabled person or of the people who created that person. It is much easier, after all, to make a pronouncement about difference than to actually live with it. This belief, strongly held by the leaders of the synagogues and the teachers of the law (Pharisees), served as a way to make clear division between light and darkness as they defined it, between being able to see God and God’s intentions and being blinded to them. It was sinful to suppose yourself worthy of a place in God’s house when you obviously had sin in your life. Disabilities and disease were the most obvious and physical indicators of sin in those days.

But in the end, it was the Jewish leaders who, ironically, were disabled. They were not able to receive the Son of God or the healing he brought from God to the earth. They dismissed it as sinful themselves, trying to shove it into the darkest corner while they held onto the light—light they constantly hid under a bushel so no one else would be able to discover it.

Jesus gives sight to the blind: he heals those who are unable to participate fully in life because of blindness. For those who claim to be free of blindness, he shows them the darkness in which they are actually living and brings to them light, also; often it is a light that they do no want in their lives.

Recently I received a call from an old friend. Some of you will be able to relate to her story. She called to tell me that about a month ago her middle son came out to her. “We had wondered,” she said, “but in that moment that he said it, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.” It’s not that she and her husband had ever been personally hateful to gay and lesbian folks. They just didn’t think they knew any, and so it made it much harder to actually see a member of their own family telling them that he is gay—that he is one of the people they’ve read about in papers and seen stories about on television, one of those people whose true life has changed the lives of those around him, one of those people God made in God’s image and called good.

Tears came to my eyes as she talked. I fully expected her to tell me that she and her husband just couldn’t have a relationship with this child to whom they had given life anymore. I was waiting for her to say that she didn’t agree with it and was heartbroken that her son would be going to hell. As she talked on, I was forming arguments in my mind to throw into the conversation to try and convince her that she was wrong and that she needed to look at this whole situation in a different way.

And they she said, “He’s my son. I love him. God loves him. And God doesn’t make mistakes with us. My son loves God more than anyone else I know including myself. And if that’s good enough for God, then it’s good enough for me.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. This woman who I have heard make questionable remarks about a life she knew nothing about, who is as theologically far apart from me on so many social justice issues, this woman who I thought I had summed up and whose response to this news I had already scripted in my head, instead left the script and offered grace into the situation. “I’m planning a trip to see him, to get to know his partner in about a month. My husband says his partner will never be a member of our family, but I think I’d like to have another son.”

I owe her a debt of gratitude for spitting on the soil of my assumptions, rubbing a healing balm across my eyes of judgment, and Sending me to wash in tears of joy over one who now, through the witness of her own son, is beginning to truly see.

Amen.