Lent 4: Who is truly blind

I don’t remember being diagnosed with diabetes. I was only three when it happened and so having the condition was just who I was and I didn’t really think much about it as I got a little older. It wasn’t that anyone suggested that being diagnosed with diabetes was a result of sin, as Jesus’s disciples suggest of the blind man in our Gospel lesson this morning; but eventually I understood that people somehow saw my disease as problematic, or limiting. 

So when I came to our reading today, I was fascinated by the reversal Jesus brings about specifically because it fundamentally contradicts the way we conceive of what is good, of what is strong, of what is meaningful: Speaking to the Pharisees who have been interrogating the man born blind about how he could now see and who healed him, Jesus says to them: "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 who were with 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. 

In other words those who presume they are righteous and all knowing, that it is by strength and worldly power that they might belong to God - those filled with pride usually based in ignorance - remain blind even in the presence of God himself. While those who recognize they are blind i.e. that they are sinners in need of help, in need of learning, in need of being changed, are those who are restored not just in physical life and sight, but in spiritual life and so in their ability to see Christ and therefore, see every aspect of the world through him.

Imagine that: your weakness - whether you’re blind, diabetic, or like David, ill equipped to be a king because you have no experience, you're young and fragile, or like the thief on the cross, you’ve not made the best choices in life, or you're old and fragile, not as sharp as you once were, or you're insecure, or struggling with mental illness, or you're in a wheelchair and can’t speak - imagine that: it is your very weakness through which God works to enable you to see him. It’s not through your strength. It’s not through you knowing it all. It’s not through you being the best or having the most. It is through your particular vulnerability in this world, that God knits you to himself. Shocking isn’t it?

But there it is. The one who created us out of clay as we hear at the beginning of Genesis - comes to the blind man who represents all of us born in the line of sinners blinded to God right from Adam and Eve - this one comes to the blind man, to us, gives of his own body; his spit, mixes it with the clay, and remakes us, recreates us, reconciles us, so that we might see and take hold of the new life that he offers to us. So that in our weakness we might display the strength and power of God’s reconciling love.

He tells the blind man to go wash in Siloam, to be cleansed and so baptized into this new life where he gains not merely physical sight, but far more importantly, spiritual illumination. Having been blind, the man doesn’t depend on his own devices - as he begins to see, both physically and spiritually - he sees everything anew. But he realizes this sight doesn’t yet provide knowledge, understanding or wisdom. In order to make use of this new sight, he must follow where the one who gives him sight leads. 

So we hear the man respond to the Pharisees in stages of spiritual growth. When the Pharisees first challenge him about who cured him, he says: “The man called Jesus” (9:11); they ask again, perhaps thinking the pressure to conform to the world’s ways might draw what they believe is the truth about the man (he’s somehow been playing a trick on people; he’s maybe manipulating others somehow); but the former blind man goes a little further in speaking of Jesus, following God’s own revelation. Now, he’s not just a man, “He is a prophet” (9:17).”

The Pharisees aren’t satisfied with this and so they’re checking with his parents, thinking maybe the added pressure on them could quell the former blind man’s commitment to his story about who this Jesus is. But the man continues and probably unknowingly, puts the spotlight on the Pharisees. And here those following or hearing of Jesus can see the Pharisees for who they truly are. They have taken the place of the blind man. For in their pride - their presumption to know and to have control over who God is and how God might be seen and heard - they are actually blind to God’s presence in their midst, working in and through the supposed disease, the supposed worldly weakness of the blind man.

He says to the Pharisees: “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (9:33). And then finally, the pivotal moment. The Pharisees reveal their rejection of God’s mercy, of his healing, of his speaking through, living in, and bearing our burdens if we allow him in: “you, a sinner, think you can teach us,” they say to the former blind man.  And in contradiction to Jesus who breaks down the barriers and invites all to him, they drive the man out of their midst because he doesn’t follow them. And there it is. The hubris of all hubris: if you are not like us, if you do not follow us, you are not welcome here. You are too broken to belong to God. How many churches have used these very same pharisaical words? Who is truly the blind man in this story? 

Jesus heard that the Pharisees 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 [already presume that they know and see rightly] may become blind." To worship Jesus is to turn your whole life over to him. Not just your Sundays, but every day. Go to God where he has revealed himself in Scripture and allow yourself to be transformed by his Spirit reshaping your mind through reading and hearing it. Such is the cure for the more paralyzing blindness: that of your spirit. Take what you are, all that you are and offer it to God to reshape. Then wait on him to wash the scales from your eyes so that you can begin to see how God made you to serve in this world. AMEN