Lent 4- The Man Born Blind

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Most of our readings today are related to sight.

In our reading from the first book of Samuel, the prophet is looking for a new king to anoint over the people of Israel. He is directed to the sons of Jesse, and he initially considers the oldest Son, Eliab. Eliab is tall and handsome, which is also how King Saul was described. However, things were not going well with King Saul, which has led God to direct the prophet Samuel to anoint a new king to eventually replace Saul. When the prophet seems sure Eliab is the one God is going to pick, he hears God say to him, 

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).

 Against expectations, none of Jesse’s sons who were present at the meeting were picked. Instead, the son who gets selected is the youngest, David. This was so unexpected they didn’t even bring him to the meeting. … How people see things, is not how God sees things.

In the letter to the Ephesians, we read about darkness and light. Obviously, we see best in the light, and it is hard to see in the darkness. We have a primordial fear of the darkness. The night is when dangerous predators are prowling about and when they are harder to notice. … As teenagers and young adults, being out late at night is usually when we are up to no good. It is when we are hidden from the eyes of our parents and teachers, who try to keep us on the right path. … Night is also when we are asleep. When we are asleep we don’t notice what is going on around us. We are sort of blind to our environment. … These metaphors are used to encourage us to live as children of light- to be awake! And to stay away from the darkness, and the shameful acts that are associated with the darkness. God is associated with light, with sight, and with what is good and true. … We will see this same language on the lips of Jesus in our Gospel reading where he says, 

“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“ (Jn 9:4-5).

Our reading from the Gospel of John is also about blindness and sight. … In the Gospel we encounter a man who was born blind. And this becomes an opportunity for the disciples to ask Jesus a question. … Tragedy and disease in the ancient world were often thought about as a consequence of sin. But, if you have a child born blind, this creates a problem for that way of thinking. Can a child sin in the womb? Or might the child be dealing with the consequences of the sin of the parents?

The Christian teaching is that the brokenness of creation is a consequence of Sin, in general. This starts with the story about Adam and Eve, but this extends beyond that as well. The prophets will sometimes talk about the sin of the people, or of a leader, as being connected to an invading army, or a drought, or pestilence. … But, the book of Job offers a warning about connecting an individual’s suffering to their own sin. Job did not suffer because of anything he did. Sometimes we do suffer as a consequences of our sinful choices, but that isn’t always a perfect correlation. Corelating a person’s sin and their personal experience of disease and tragedy too rigidly might match up more with the idea of karma, but we should be careful about this as Christians, and take the warning of the Book of Job seriously.

Jesus rejects the two options that the disciples offered to explain the man’s blindness- That he somehow sinned in the womb, or that his blindness was due to the sin of his parents. Instead, Jesus says that the meaning behind his blindness is the opportunity for God’s works to be revealed in him. Then Jesus, the light of the world, makes some mud with his saliva and spreads it on the man’s eyes and tells him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The man comes back able to see and this starts an incredible drama.

First, some doubt that this is the same blind man who used to beg, but he reassures them that it is indeed him, and that someone named Jesus healed him. The Pharisees then investigate. Instead of celebrating God giving this man his sight, they are stuck on the fact that this happened on a Sabbath day. Working for the man’s healing sounds like a violation of the Sabbath, especially since Jesus was making mud, and perhaps because the man was instructed to travel to the pool of Siloam, which, if it was far enough away, may have violated the sabbath traditions. … Instead of re-evaluating their understanding of how to keep the Sabbath, they instead are scandalized by the idea that this healing took place on the Sabbath. The man who did this healing can’t really be a holy man if he violated the Sabbath to do this healing. But how could a sinner do a healing like this? Not everyone in the Pharisee camp is of the same mind. It seems to start and argument amongst them.

They turn to the man who had been blind to see what he thinks, and he replies that he thinks Jesus is a prophet. Then some doubt that the man really was blind, so call in his parents as witnesses to find out if he was born blind or not. It starts to feel like a courtroom drama. They get him to repeat his statement over again and they seem to be badgering the witnesses to try to catch them in a lie or to get them to doubt their statements.

As the trial drags on it starts to become obvious that many of the Pharisees seem to be unwilling to see, and the formerly blind man has gained spiritual sight in addition to his physical sight. The man speaks quite forcefully to the group of Pharisees that have been questioning him, saying, 

“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” (Vv.30-33).

Still unwilling to see, and reinforcing the old model of sin and disease, they respond defensively, 

"You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out” (v34).

Jesus finds him and he moves him from thinking of him as prophet to the “Son of Man”. And then he worships Jesus. He comes to a fuller spiritual sight.

The end of the reading returns to the themes of blindness and sin- 

“Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement 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” (9:39-41).

The Pharisees assume the man was blind and “born entirely in sins” (9:34). They are stuck in the old model, and Jesus is challenging their model. … They think they see. They are sure of themselves.

Humility is a foundational virtue for Christians. If we lose that footing we can wander in a thousand wrong directions. Humility means knowing where you can see and also knowing where you are blind. The humble were very open to Jesus. This humble “blindness” left them open to receiving their sight from Jesus. But those who were sure of their “sight” were closed to receiving the healing he was offering because they didn’t believe they needed it.

As we continue our journey through Lent, we continue to examen our lives, and hopefully we will grow in humility. One of the things that can happen is that we become aware of parts of our lives where we are spiritually blind and need healing. … The Pharisees in our Gospel reading were unwilling to humble themselves. Their rigidness might have been comforting for them in the sense that they didn’t have to change. They could assure themselves of their “rightness”- that they see things clearly. They didn’t have to do the hard work of reconsidering how they are looking at the world, or how they are looking at God. There was this incredible miracle, and their blindness was exposed. They were unwilling to see what God was doing right under their noses. They were blind to God. … Are their ways in which we might have a little bit of that blindness in us? … Are we open to God shaking our lives up? Or would we rather ignore what God is doing to keep our lives as they are? We might not be particularly happy with the way things are, but things are familiar and predictable, which feels safe. … But, what if God is wanting to challenge us to see something new? Are we open to God healing our blindness so we can see in new ways? AMEN.