Lent 4, March 26, 2017
1 Sam 16:1b,6-7,10-13a; Eph 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Brookdale
In today’s Gospel story, the simple blind man, after he is cured, confounds the learned Pharisees, who all have PhDs in scripture and theology. Jesus reprimands the Pharisees because they think they see better than ordinary people, but in fact they are unable to “see” what God has done right in front of them. The Pharisees cling blindly to the Sabbath law and miss the great good work by which Jesus has honored the Sabbath. We’ve all encountered this kind of blindness, which is well described in the saying, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
For two thousand years, many Christians have read this story as evidence that Christianity is better than Judaism, because we Christians can see that Jesus is the divine Messiah, and those Pharisees could not. But if we read it that way, we miss the point. Blindness can strike any of us. In fact, most of us are old enough to remember many times that we have blindly ignored something that was staring us in the face. We were looking right at it, but couldn’t see it.
The blind man in this story was blind from birth. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t blind. He doesn’t even ask Jesus to heal him. He is clueless, as we so often are. Jesus takes the initiative to give him sight. Isn’t that how it is when we can’t see what is right in front of us, and then something or someone enables us to see?
Nadine Gordimer tells a story about her mother’s blindness. Gordimer was a white South African novelist who campaigned against apartheid. She came from a family that opposed apartheid, and she grew up in a home open to white, black, and South Asian guests. Her mother knew and welcomed opponents of apartheid, and she hugged and embraced her guests of every race.
Eventually Gordimer moved to England, and her mother went to visit her there, away from South Africa and apartheid. One day she and her mother went into a shoe store. This was back in the day when shoe stores still had salespeople to help you try on shoes. The sales clerk, a black man, brought a pair of shoes, knelt in front of the mother, and took her foot to slide it into the shoe. Gordimer’s mother froze. A black man had touched her foot, and she became rigid with shock.
Now this was someone who had been touched and hugged by Africans all her life. But only at that moment did she realize that in South Africa there was always a glance or a gesture by which the black African asked and received permission to touch a white person. She had never realized that. This anti-apartheid warrior was blind to her own expectations in interracial contact.
We are all blind; we all have blind spots. The real question is what happens when God gives us the opportunity to see. The blind man in the Gospel realizes that God has healed him through Jesus, and therefore Jesus must be a prophet. He lets go of his blindness and follows Jesus, even if it means being rejected by his neighbors. Nadine Gordimer’s mother is mortified and admits her own unconscious prejudice. She will overcome it.
Jesus also gives the Pharisees in today’s Gospel a chance to see. They are focused on scrupulous observance of the law—which is good. That’s how they show their love of God. But when God heals the blind man through Jesus, they have an opportunity to “see” God’s bold new approach that doesn’t fit in with their expectations. Instead they call Jesus a sinner. The blind man can see now; he is no longer clueless, but they are. They are extra clueless because they insist that they’re the only ones who can see.
We are all blind sometimes. We Christians have been so blind so often over the centuries. Christians persecuted Jews down through the ages, blind to the fact that Jesus and his mother and the Apostles were all Jews. During the Reformation, Catholic authorities burned people at the stake for reading the Bible.
We all have blind spots. When God gives us the grace to see, let us admit our blindness and allow God to heal it.