Reflection on John 9:1-41
Throughout John’s gospel the underlying question to be answered is, “Who is this man Jesus?” John gives his readers the answer in the first sentence of his gospel – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[1] Within the gospel, however, various other answers are offered by the crowd and by the religious authorities – a good man, a deceiver, the Messiah, the prophet foretold by Moses, a false prophet. Even Jesus’ siblings are uncertain about who Jesus is (besides being their brother). They want him to reveal his identity at the autumnal Festival of Booths – to do something spectacular that will convince them and everyone else that Jesus really is the Messiah. Jesus appears to refuse their demands, just as he refused the devil’s temptation to jump off the highest pinnacle of the temple and land on the ground beneath uninjured, to prove beyond doubt that he is the divine Son of God. However, during this festival Jesus does perform one of the sign miracles that point to his identity, each of which illuminates a corresponding metaphorical “I am” saying, through which Jesus somewhat obliquely answers the question as to his identity. In the case of the healing of the man born blind, the connected “I am” saying is “I am the light of the world?”
John records the story of a man who had never experienced light seeing it for the first time literally and spiritually during a festival when light had both physical and symbolic significance. After sunset at the conclusion of the first day of the festival, which was a high holy day on which no manual labour was to be done, four huge candelabra were erected in the temple’s Court of the Women. The flames emanating from these large lamps lit up all of Jerusalem, and facilitated night time entertainments like musical performances, dancing and acrobatics. This contributed to the Festival of Booths being considered the most joyful of the Jewish religious holidays.
When Jesus and his disciples encounter the man born blind, the disciples reveal the limitations of their theological thinking when they ask Jesus who had sinned, the man or his parents, causing the man’s blindness from birth. Probably from the time of the reign of Josiah, when the Book of Deuteronomy became prominent, the idea persisted that piety was a requisite for good health and financial security. The more rigorous one’s adherence to the teachings of the Torah the more likely God would be to bless one with long life and prosperity. This idea still has currency in some branches of Christianity, and fails to reflect lived reality. I have a friend who has lived a faith filled and faithful life, who after having experienced a number of very serious injuries and illnesses wonders why God hasn’t miraculously healed her. The nature of miracles is that they are miraculous, meaning that they tend to be rare. Miracles are an extraordinary demonstration of God’s grace not the assured benefit of our obedience. We obey Jesus not to gain God’s grace but because we are already recipients of it. Jesus had already done his thing for the blind man, who then had to carry out Jesus’ instructions, which required him to have faith. Had he reasoned that having mud plastered over his eyes wasn’t going to do any good, or that there was nothing special about the water from the pool of Siloam and another more convenient water source would do just as well to wash off the mud, would the miracle have occurred?
Jesus had said that the man had been born blind so that “God’s works may be revealed in him,” indicating that something about God’s power and compassion would be revealed through the gift of sight to the man. What was also revealed was the lack of understanding of that power and compassion among the humans who become aware of the miracle. The man’s sudden acquisition of sight initially confused those who had known him previously as a blind beggar. They debated his identity. Once this had been established, the pressing question was how he had gained his sight. The man told his story to his neighbours, and then to the Pharisees to whom he was brought, and again to the Jewish authorities. By that time he was rather grumpy about having to repeat himself over and over. For the Pharisees and other Jews with power the issue was not that a stupendous miracle had occurred, but whether the man who had performed the miracle was righteous.
This miracle sparks yet another Sabbath controversy. Every time Jesus healed a person on a Sabbath, there were holier than though type people who objected to him “working.” I’ve described the Sabbath as humanity’s first piece of industrial legislation. It recognises that humans need regular periods of rest, which the Sabbath law mandated be made available to even slaves and beasts of burden. Surely being healed of an infirmity is in keeping with the spirit of the Sabbath law. The effort required to function when one is ill or has a disability is often great. To be healed is to be granted rest, the purpose of the Sabbath. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is recorded as having said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.”[2] The heart of the dispute arising from Jesus healing the blind man was revealed when “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?’” The underlying question was, of course, “Who is this man Jesus?” Is he really the Lord of the Sabbath with the authority to determine what is and is not permitted behaviour on the holy day?[3] Another examination of what had happened was undertaken by “the Jews,” who questioned whether a miracle had in fact occurred. The parents of the formerly blind man were required to confirm that he was their son and that he had been born blind. Wanting to distant themselves from the controversy surrounding their son because they feared “the Jews,” they deflected the questioning towards him. “He is of age, ask him,” they said.
The human tendency is to turn regulations intended to liberate into traditions designed to control. This trajectory towards oppression is all too common among people with power over others. Religious zealotry, frequently accompanied by hypocrisy, diminishes the Divine One into a harsh disciplinarian, and leaders with religious authority often don’t adhere to the constraints they enforce upon others. We see this in theocracies like Iran and absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, where the mullahs have lived in luxury and the princes have indulged in hedonism, while compelling their subjects to adhere to the strictures of Islamic law. We see it in Christian cults where the senior pastors fleece their flocks in order to dwell in luxurious mansions, drive expensive cars and fly about in private jets, while justifying this excess as the blessings of God rather than the ill-gotten gains of their greed and corruption. When identifying the spiritual failings of the opponents of Jesus, we should acknowledge that the same failings plague some religious folk today, and that while it is easy to see their sins, we know that we too are capable of hypocrisy, for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”[4]
According to the Talmud there were many synagogues in second temple Jerusalem, although definitive archaeological evidence within the old city is lacking. There was, apparently, even a synagogue within the temple complex, which would have been under the control of the Jewish elites. Maybe it was this synagogue that those who confessed Jesus as the Messiah would be excommunicated from. A common method for controlling the thinking of individual members of religious communities is to threaten them with exclusion or shunning. This can be devastating for the people concerned, who lose not only the opportunity to engage in communal worship and study but the companionship and support of fellow worshippers who are close friends and family members.
If you recall nothing much of this sermon remember this: that when John refers to “the Jews” he’s not primarily thinking of their ethnicity. Almost everyone in John’s gospel is racially Jewish (exceptions being, obviously, Pilate and the Roman military, and the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well). John distinguishes between the ordinary Jewish people whom he calls “the crowd”[5] and the Jewish leadership (the chief priests and members of the Great Sanhedrin) whom he calls “the Jews.” This distinction is important, especially when it comes to John’s version of Christ’s passion. On Good Friday remember that it was not the ordinary people who turned against Jesus but the elite class (the people John calls “the Jews”) who orchestrated his judicial murder. John is not anti-Semitic as he is often accused of being, but anti the wealthy using their power to abuse. This is a problem that still persists, as the infamous Epstein files have recently demonstrated.
The attitude of “the Jews” towards the healed man illustrates the problem of having a worldview so entrenched that the plain truth cannot be recognised. People’s willingness to embrace ridiculous conspiracy theories, disregarding the facts that contradict their beliefs, is a modern example of this phenomenon. “The Jews” being convinced that Jesus must be a sinner because he had broken their interpretation of the Law of Moses, couldn’t perceive what was apparent to the healed man. “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,” he told the Jewish scholars, and for his trouble got driven out of the temple and its synagogue. In contrast Jesus welcomed the man into his new worshipping community, while critiquing the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees, who unlike the healed man couldn’t grow in faith and knowledge. Jesus’ challenge to the religious establishment of his day remains his challenge to us today. He 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.” Lent is a time for reflection and repentance. It’s a time to check that our current thinking is not blinding us to the truth Jesus wants to reveal to us individually and as a church. Let us keep our spiritual eyes open and focused. Amen.
[1] John 1:1
[2] Mark 2:27 NRSV
[3] Mark 3:28
[4] Romans 3:23
[5] e.g. John 6:22; 7:40-43; 11:42; 12:18