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  March 2, 2008   Lent 4
  John 9

The Sight that is Blindness    The Blindness That Is Sight

This 9th chapter of John’s Gospel is about blindness and sight. For me, the question that leaps off the page and begs to be asked is, "Who is it in this story that is really blind; and who is it in this story that has authentic sight?"   Take the disciple's question for example, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents; that he was born blind?"   Their question was a reference to the popular religious idea that there was a cause and effect relationship in regard to personal suffering; a notion based on the assumption that there was a perfect moral order firmly in place. In an attempt to make sense out of a broken and suffering world, the disciples assumed the man's blindness was the result of God's judgment of his sin or the sin of his parents.

So I ask the question again, "Who is it that is really blind in the story, and who is it that has authentic sight?"  Because of their belief system, the disciples were not able to really feel the man’s pain or express compassion for this real person sitting in the dirt begging by the side of the road. They were only able, as a result of their faith, to deposit this man in a category.   “Rabbi, who sinned, this man…”

Jesus suggested that the man's blindness had nothing to do with his sin or anybody else's sin, but that his blindness provided an opportunity for God's glory to be revealed!

Who is it that is really blind in the story, and who is it that has authentic sight? Take the Pharisees and the other religious people in the story. They either didn't believe in the healing, or they trivialized it because they simply could not entertain the possibility that Jesus might be of God.  For them, Jesus didn't fit the pre-cast form of what the Messiah should look like, be like, and behave like.  After all, wasn’t he a sinner as he didn’t even obey the sacred Sabbath laws!  As far as they were concerned Jesus was a phony and they even suggested that the blind man had faked his blindness all these years. They simply could not celebrate with the man in his joy over his new found sight.

 The ironic twist to this story is that those who should have been able to see (the disciples, the Pharisees, and religious folks) were blind; and the one who couldn't see, the blind man, saw very clearly, not only with his eyes, but saw with his heart in such a way that he acknowledged Jesus as being from God.

From deep in this story emerges an all important question, "Where, when and how can religion and faith strike people blind?"  More personally, render us (you and me) blind?

We look around our planet and see so many places where people conduct warfare and initiate violence in the name of God and religion.  At the root of many of the world's great chronic conflicts lie core religious causes. When we probe into these conflicts, we see not only political, social and economic factors, but profoundly religious dynamics. We're familiar with situations where in the name of religion and religious causes, human life  is diminished and destroyed.

I knew a woman in Aurora who suffered a broken jaw and partial loss of sight in one eye due to her husband’s violence.  Her pastor went to the shelter and told her that it was her duty to return home to her husband, and if she didn't, she stood under God's wrathful judgment.

Extreme blindness can be cultivated in the name of God, faith and religion.  But yet, if I'm honest enough and courageous enough to look inside of myself, I can see places where sometimes I am blind, or at least wearing blinders not because of my faith, but rather because I'm not seeing with the eyes of my faith; not seeing with the eyes of Jesus, but seeing with other kinds of eyes. 

I may choose to look out at the world and see others through, let’s say, political eyes, or moral eyes, or economic eyes and as a result but stick labels on people; labels that dehumanize and minimize.       

 How do you employ or don’t employ, as the case may be, your faith and religion to see others that you don’t like, or are different from you, or those you don’t understand, or even those you fear.  Do you use your faith and the name of God to reinforce your prejudices?  Or do you see your religion as contradictory to prejudice, especially if you follow Jesus, the one who crossed over just about every major prejudicial barrier of his day; especially the barriers that kept the religiously righteous sequestered from the sinners; outcasts; Gentiles; Samaritans; lepers; the unclean and many others.

Jesus said the man’s blindness found purpose in revealing the "glory and work of God" thereby giving his life eternal significance and ultimate dignity. Is that how you see yourself?  Do you see that as your purpose for even being alive is that the "glory and work of God" can be revealed through you?   Or have you attached your wagon to another star: materialism; security; or self-service?  How about your weaknesses, limitations, even illnesses.  Do you see them as an opportunity for God to be strong where you are weak?

The ninth chapter of John ends with what, at first, seems to be a very confusing statement.  Jesus says, "I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind."  That proclamation only makes sense in the context of this chapter. It only makes sense when we realize that the eyes that Jesus came to bring us are his eyes, which are God's eyes. His are the eyes of true sight.  His are the eyes that were not afraid to look upon and embrace the outcast, the lepers, the ones nobody else would touch.  His were the eyes that never stuck labels on people, but saw everyone as a child of God, created in the image of God, worthy of God’s love.  His are the eyes that sees the world and sees each person as God’s sees. 

They were eyes that looked on those that the world had discarded and thrown away, and still saw that they were precious children of God filled with beauty and much potential.

They were eyes that pierced through the phony shells of pious, self righteous religion with which we can wrap ourselves, and he calls us out of those protective shells to a new way of seeing, living and loving.

They were even eyes, when blurred by exposure, pain and his own sweat and blood, that were able to look down at the very ones who had nailed him there and pray, "Father, forgive them!"

Eyes like these and sight like this the world has seldom seen, but I do believe the world needs these eyes and this way of seeing like never before. The world needs the eyes of Christ who saw every situation and every person uniquely through the eyes of God.

As conflicts all around the world are ignited and erupt with a frightening fervor we can surely recognize the old ways of seeing are nothing more than varieties of blindness.

If the world is to have these eyes and is to be graced with this authentic way of seeing, it begins with you and me and our blindness.  The grace, wonder and miracle of it is that God passionately desires to heal our blind old eyes with the gift of fresh new eyes; new sight; new vision; new perspective; the eyes of Christ; the vision of God; by grace through faith!  Amen!