John 9:1-13; 30-41 NRSVUE
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 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, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 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?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 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.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.
30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 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.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
You may have noticed that the reading jumps from verse 13 to verse 30 – you’re welcome!
This is a long story so I’m going to dig right in.
Starting in verse 1, Jesus and a collection of disciples are somewhere near Jerusalem, maybe East of the city. In chapter 8 Jesus was at the Mount of Olives, which is east of the city so they seem to be traveling towards Jerusalem.
As they’re walking, they see a blind man.
And the disciples do something kinda rude.
Rather than talking *to* the man, like a normal person, the disciples start talking *about* the man who is blind – using him as a prop for a theological discussion about the cause of disability.
“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.”
To us, with our access to medical science, this seems like a dumb question. Blindness is not caused by sin, it’s caused by diseases and genetic disorders.
But science hadn’t been invented yet, and people like to know why.
When faced with a serious diagnosis, “why” is often the first question we ask.
Why did this happen?
Why did this happen to me?
So the disciples, while definitely being rude, were asking the same question we all ask when facing a life-altering diagnosis.
“Why did this happen?
The unspoken question behind the way being,
“How do I prevent this bad thing from happening to me?”
In a prescientific world, the answer to most why questions was God.
If something bad happened – you must have made God mad.
If something good happened – you must have pleased God.
This world view was not unique to the Hebrew people – it was pretty much how everyone thought before science.
The Romans were mad at the Jews because they didn’t worship the Roman gods because the Romans were afraid that a lack of worship would make the gods angry. If the gods became angry, then bad things would happen.
So the disciples are not being exceptionally stupid when they ask who sinned to make the man blind. They’re actually asking a very reasonable theological question for the time period.
A question we still ask, even though we, more or less, have a scientific understanding of the world.
I mean, when something bad happens we still ask:
Why did this happen?
Why did this happen to me?
And…
“How do I prevent this bad thing from happening to me?”
We just ask our doctor, or some other expert, instead of a priest.
But there’s still a whisper of the old question of whose sin caused this bad thing to happen within our modern why.
We’ve mostly gotten better about blaming people for getting sick, but our first impulse on hearing that someone is sick is still to give advice — Have you tried this? Have you done that? Did you call your doctor?
But the less we understand the bad things that happen to people the more likely we are to go looking for some kind of sin. Science has taught us that addiction is a disease, but because we don’t fully understand how to prevent addiction or fully understand how to successfully treat addiction, our why questions have a tendency to drift towards blame. We ask the same question:
“Was it this person’s parents who sinned or was it this person who sinned that led to this addiction?”
But we ask it in the form of were this person’s parents bad and that led to addiction or did the person make bad choices.
And when people are deep within the disease of addiction and not really capable of utilizing help – we often blame them for the sin of “choosing” their addiction.
We seem to entirely forget that addiction is a disease and revert to the concept of moral failure aka sin. Because if we can blame someone then we are in control.
The same can be said for many other social ills that we don’t fully understand.
People with mental health diagnosis do not choose to have a mental illness, and yet they are often shamed for not magically figuring out how to get better from illnesses that we don’t have good treatments for.
People who have experienced trauma are expected to just “get over it,” as if they are choosing to live with post traumatic stress! Often because we would rather blame the victims than acknowledge the systemic sins of a culture that allows abusers to get away with it.
People who are poor are blamed for their own poverty – as if most poor people throughout this country and throughout the world don’t work 3 times as hard to get a fraction of what the billionaire class makes off of their labor and the price gouging of the basic necessities of life.
And still people ask,
Was it their parents who sinned against Mamon and made them poor?
Or is it their own fault that they are poor? I mean, they could give up avocado toast and lattes.
We ask these questions, not because we are fundamentally bad people, but because we are afraid.
We are afraid of bad things happening to us.
And we think that If there is a reason why bad things happen…
Then maybe there is something we can do to prevent that bad thing from happening to us.
We have this backwards hope that if we can just do everything right nothing bad will happen.
If I eat healthy, exercise, avoid addictive substances, get an education, work hard, save money, invest smartly, go to therapy, take vitamins, limit screen time, micro-dose, focus on macros, meditate, be responsible, give up coffee and avocado toast, have the right friends, network….
…and the list goes on and on and on of things to do or not do.
Until we are back to the old superstition of who made the gods angry by failing to sacrifice…what?
Every last bit of joy and basic humanity?
In order to avoid sinning, so that we can avoid bad things happening to us?
Tell us who sinned, Jesus, so that we can protect ourselves by avoiding that sin.
Look at Jesus’ answer in verse 3.
Who sinned?
This is not a trick question.
I do want you to answer, out loud.
Yeah. Nobody sinned.
Nobody sinned!
God had a bigger plan and this man’s healing is part of that plan.
Now I don’t think that is true of all bad things.
I don’t think that God is causing bad things to happen on a regular basis just to demonstrate God’s power.
I’ve studied the theological question of, why do bad things happen, quite a lot, and honestly, there are a lot of reasons why bad things happen and sometimes there’s no reason at all.
Stuff happens.
-Sometimes we do bad things.
-Sometimes somebody else does bad things and their sins cause other people suffering.
-Sometimes bad actions snowball into worse things.
-Sometimes things we don’t enjoy aren’t necessarily bad, just natural functions of life.
-Sometimes life and death and everything in between are a mystery.
God knows.
And I’m willing to trust that God is good.
Even when I don’t understand.
So Jesus healed the man and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is in SE Jerusalem – a busy place that put the man into the path of the Pharisees.
In verses 15 – 29, the Pharisees interrogate the formerly blind man, because they suspect that it’s Jesus and they don’t like Jesus – because Jesus is interrupting their whole protection racket of avoiding all sin in order to prevent bad things from happening.
But when we pick up the story again in verse 30, the formerly blind man isn’t having it – because he can see the evidence of God’s power and compassion with his own eyes!
So the Pharisees drive the healed man out of the city because he refuses to not believe his eyes.
In verse 35, Jesus introduces himself to the healed man and explains to him that some people can’t see the truth and some people don’t want to see the truth.
Bible editors often title this section, “Spiritual Blindness,” just in case we might be trying to take it too literally.
In verses 40-41 there are some Pharisees being snarky – “surely we are not blind!”
But Jesus – Jesus spoke up when people who should know better were being mean.
Jesus called people out for their sins.
And in this story, it’s not the Blind man or his parents who sinned,
It’s the Pharisees who sinned.
Their sin is still a popular sin today.
The sin of increasing the suffering of marginalized by blaming the marginalized for their own suffering.
The sin of twisting and weaponizing the good advice of scripture in order to shift the blame from the real causes of suffering to those who are hurting.
We all long to be safe.
We all want to have enough.
We all enjoy having a little more than enough, to make life more fun.
This is why we want to know who sinned – to try to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.
But don’t be deceived.
Life isn’t safe.
There is no perfect combination of choices that will lead to an ideal life.
Suffering happens.
Whether we deserve it or not.
Good things happen too.
Whether we deserve it or not.
Jesus didn’t lead with blame, Jesus led with grace.
So let’s live with compassion.
Compassion for yourself and compassion for others.
