I recently began participating in a discussion group with some of the members of my faith community. We are examining passages of the bible looking for the intent of the text from all angles. We began with John 9 and I would like to share here what I’ve observed. Here is a summation of the story (to find it in its entirety click here).
Jesus and his disciples are walking along on the Sabbath when they run into a man. The story says the man has been blind from birth. The disciples ask Jesus; “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus tells them neither and then spits in the dirt, makes mud and rubs it on his eyes. He then tells the man to go to a local pool and wash. When he does his sight is healed.
This immediately throws everyone into frenzy. The man’s neighbors recognize him as the one they had seen begging and demand that he tell them what happened. When he tells them they take him to the Pharisees.
Because this healing occurred on the Sabbath, the Pharisees question him. The law required that no work be done on the Sabbath. But after questioning him, they are not convinced he was ever blind, so they take him to his parents to ask them. His parents deflect the question by saying yes, he was blind, but they do not answer how he was healed. They instead tell them to ask their son. They did this because the Pharisees had already decided that anyone who followed Jesus would be kicked out of the synagogue.
The Pharisees ask the man again how he was healed. When he tells them what Jesus did they proclaim, “This man (Jesus) is not from God, he does not keep the Sabbath. He is a sinner.” The healed man responds “Whether this man is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I do know, I was blind and now I see.” Upon further questioning the man responds to them again by saying that he obviously is from God because he healed him. “We know God doesn’t listen to sinners,” he says. When questioned further, the healed man asks them if they want to become his disciples too, since they keep asking him about it. At this, they say to him ”How dare you lecture us? You were stepped in sin at birth.” With this they throw the man from the synagogue.
The story says that when Jesus hears that he was kicked from the synagogue he goes and finds him. He then engages him in a conversation asking him if he believes in the Son of Man. Jesus then makes the following statement. ”For judgment the I’ve come into the world so that the blind will see and those who claim to see will become blind.”
Throughout this passage the issue of sin is keeps coming up. The disciples want to know who sinned. The Pharisees say Jesus is a sinner. The healed man says we know God doesn’t listen to sinners. The Pharisees tell him he was steeped in sin at birth. For Jesus, who sinned seems to be irrelevant. He is more interested in the condition of the blind man. We find a similar story in Mark 3, where a man is healed on the Sabbath.
In that story Jesus tells them, “The Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath”. He also says to the Pharisees ““Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? Here we find some clarity in Jesus statement, “for judgment I’ve come into the world.” Jesus, by his loving action to this man, exposes the heart of those around him.
We are told that this man was seen begging. It’s not hard to imagine why, everyone seems to have believed his afflictions were caused by his or someone else’s sin. The disciples did, otherwise they wouldn’t have asked Jesus who sinned. The Pharisees did, they told him he was steeped in sin from birth. They obviously perceived this because he was born blind. He probably even did himself. We are told his parents are there. Why didn’t they help him? Maybe they were to poor to help him. Maybe his affliction caused people to believe they had sinned. What Jesus is exposing is that no one seemed to care that this man was blind. We can infer this because no one seemed to care when he was healed. They were blind to his humanity.
What we find is that Jesus values saving life (giving the man sight) over destroying it (throwing him out of the synagogue). Throwing this man out of the synagogue would have socially ostracized him and removed him from his best source for help. Jesus shows his love for this man both in healing him and in finding him once he was thrown out. There is another element in which I believe Jesus is shining light onto their blindness. The people all seem to accept the fact that “God doesn’t listen to sinners”. Jesus here presents the more radical idea that not only does God listen to sinners, he heals them and pursues them. How often do we look at broken people and decide their decisions put them there. Maybe what is important is not how they got there but how we can get them out.
As to the question of ”why do bad things happen?” Jesus doesn’t really give an answer. He just states ”this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” We could interpret this statement to mean God purposed this man to be blind for his own glory, though I don’t think that is clear from his response. This might lead some to believe that God is not just. When presented with the question of God being just maybe our best response is like that of the man healed.
“Whether or not this man is a sinner or not, I don’t know, but one thing I do know……
May we become the kind of people who see others humanity. May we see that people’s sin is irrelevant when deciding whether or not to help them. May we be transformed by God’s grace.
