This morning we have the third of four long narratives from John's Gospel that the lectionary schedules for Lent this year. Two weeks ago we heard about Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus. Last week we heard about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Today we heard about Jesus and a blind man, and next Sunday Cynthia Campbell will preach on Jesus' experience with Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. All four stories are not only long but theologically significant. They are a wonderful resource for Lenten reflection and renewal.
What we have in today's Gospel reading is a healing story, a story in which a man blind from birth receives sight. All four Gospels contain accounts of Jesus healing blind people. In John's Gospel miracles are called signs; they point beyond themselves to a larger truth. This morning's narrative is packed with larger truth.
Almost in passing the Gospel writer deals with the relation of sin and physical impairment. "Who sinned," the disciples asked, "this man born blind or his parents?"
"Neither the man nor his parents," responded Jesus. "You will see the glory of God in all this." I suspect there are still people who want to make a connection between impairment and moral rectitude, who want to go far beyond the known consequences of things like a high fat diet or unprotected sex with strangers. At this point in my life I don't believe calamities or sicknesses of various kinds are connected to divine punishment. Sometimes they are the result of human foolishness, but often they are inexplicable—just the way things happen. The man's blindness was not a consequence of sin.
Jesus repeats what he said in the previous chapter: "I am the light of the world." He spits on the ground, makes a paste and puts it on the blind man's eyes. He tells the man to wash in a nearby pool. The man does so and gains his sight.
What follows is a well-told illustration of religion gone off the track. First, the man's neighbors express amazement that the one they were used to seeing begging by the side of the road can now see. Some question whether it really is the former beggar; others are sure it is. The man himself says, "Yes, I am that man." The neighbors ask how he got his sight. He says, "The man called Jesus spit on the ground, made clay, put it on my eyes, and sent me to the pool to wash. When I did that, I could see."
Then the religious authorities get involved. The important thing is not that they were Jews or even that they were Pharisees, members of a particular sect within the Judaism of Jesus' time. The important thing is that they were inflexible; they couldn't see the wonder of a blind man's receiving sight, however it may have happened. What they focused on was a minor infraction of the rules they held to be at the heart of godly living. They represent the worst kind of institutionalized religion. The laws about the Sabbath, the seventh day, the day of rest, forbade any kind of kneading, as with dough. And making clay out of spittle involved a kind of kneading or patting. The religious authorities, who didn't like Jesus anyway, were furious that he violated their list of what could and could not be done on the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath.
The religious leaders were not unified in their response to what Jesus had done. Some said he couldn't be from God if he disregarded the Sabbath. Others said he must be from God if he could give sight to a blind man. They asked the formerly blind man what he thought about the person who had healed him. "I think he's a prophet," said the man, implying that Jesus came from God.
Not stopping there, the authorities summoned the parents of the now-seeing man. The parents didn't want to say good things about Jesus, because people who did that risked being put out of the community. So they told the authorities to ask their son, who could speak for himself.
In an almost choreographed comedy, the authorities summon the man again. "Give God the glory; tell the truth," they told him. "Jesus is a sinner, isn't he?"
The man speaks with honesty and courage. "Whether or not he is a sinner, I don't know. But this I do know: once I was blind, now I can see." (You understand where John Newton got the words for Amazing Grace: "I once was blind but now I see.") The authorities ask him to tell how he got his sight. He becomes more courageous. He questions why they want to hear the story again. "Do you want to become his disciples?" he asks. The authorities become enraged, and they put the man out of the community.
Jesus hears what has been done to the man and seeks him out-the heart of our good news: the love of God seeks out whom others reject. Jesus identifies himself as coming from God, and the man opens himself to this new truth, becoming what the Gospel writer would call a believer, one willing to be loved and affirmed by God.
This sets the stage for Jesus to say he came into the world for judgment, so that those who don't see may see and those who see (or think they see) may become blind. It is clearly a word play on seeing in the sense of physical sight, and seeing as understanding spiritual realities. The man Jesus healed moved from seeing with his newly opened eyes to seeing with his newly opened heart.
Some of the religious authorities hear Jesus' statement and ask him, "Are you saying we are blind?" He responds in effect, "Since you are willfully blind to the new truth I am bringing, you are guilty."
Just a couple of comments about this story, which speaks so well for itself on many levels. The word sin occurs several times in the narrative. For me the Fourth Gospel presents a different concept of sin than other New Testament documents. Most people think of sin as misdeeds or actions contrary to God's will. Cleary that understanding is in the New Testament. But the ninth chapter of John, which has been our focus today, seems to be saying that sin is more like a stance or posture than a series of actions or a kind of behavior. The authorities were guilty of sin because they refused to be open to love as the essence of godliness. They rejected the light that Jesus was bringing into the world, the light of mercy, grace, and love—that wonderful word again.
Someone in one of my previous pastorates observed that she could always tell when I had written the Prayer of Confession in the worship bulletin. "You say sin instead of sins," she said. She was right on. My view of sin is that it's a condition more than misdeeds or moral failures, important as those things are. For me sin is often resistance to being loved or to loving.
This past week I lived with the story of Jesus and the man blind from birth. That's what I do when I'm going to be preaching on a particular text from the Bible. I lived with this story against the background of learning that on February 13 the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) rendered a decision that candidates for ordination cannot express disagreement with the Book of Order's requirement of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness for church officers. Many people, I among them, felt that two years ago the General Assembly opened a window for expressing such disagreement, thus making it possible for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people as well as straight single people to be ordained without violating their conscience. The judicial commission effectively slammed that window shut.
I have not read the text of the decision, only excerpts as printed in Presbyterian Outlook. But from what I have read it seems to me the judicial commission acted like the religious authorities in John, chapter 9, today's reading. They refused to see the possibility of looking at a candidate's spiritual maturity and relational gifts as bases for ordination. Instead they chose to hold to the letter of an aberrant and prejudicial law. It becomes more urgent than ever to get that law out of our church's constitution.
More than seventy years ago I was baptized into the Presbyterian Church. I have felt proud of my denomination when it stood with women in their struggle for full equality in the church and in society. I have felt proud when my denomination stood with African Americans in their struggle for dignity and full inclusion in the church and in society.
I am not proud when my denomination lags behind much of the culture by not joining with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Christians in their struggle for full equality in the church and in society. I am grateful that the position represented by the judicial commission's decision is being opposed by many, many Presbyterians, who continue our tradition of putting love and justice far above demeaning rules and regulations. Rules and laws are necessary in any society, in any organization, even "spiritual" ones. But in the Christian Church rules and laws should be consistent with the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, who went out of his way to be with, in every sense of that phrase, the marginalized and persecuted people of his time.
Thank God for people who see clearly—with their hearts as well as with their eyes. With no sense of arrogance or superiority over people who disagree with us, we at Rutgers Presbyterian Church in making decisions about ordination as ministers, elders, and deacons, will continue to be guided by Christ, who is the light of the world, and not by erroneous decisions of a judicial commission, who may see but not really see.
May God give us courage like that of the man who was healed by Jesus. We who are in Christ also have been healed by God's unconditional love, and we will never act against that love.
Thanks be to God.