This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 9. The English Standard Version supplies the title “Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind.”
All of us have asked the question, “Why do some people suffer more than others?” I ask it every time I walk to Chow Kit market in KL.
Many of the people I pass by are homeless. Some speak vigorously with imaginary people. Some have no arms or legs. Some are blind.
Some members of my church suffer from long-term disabilities. Some, due to genetics; others, due to conditions which doctors cannot treat.
Why are there differences between people? Why do some among us have less physical and mental abilities? If we believe God created all mankind in his own image, why are some people disadvantaged?
Think of someone who can walk only with crutches because of polio which he contracted as a child. Of someone who can move only in a wheelchair due to an accident caused by a drunk driver. Of someone born blind.
In the time of Jesus, the average lifespan was about 35 years. There was no middle class. You were either very, very rich; or very, very poor. Suffering, due to mental and physical conditions, was common. This is why Jesus healed so many people – and became so famous.
Today, John tells us what happened one day as Jesus left the Temple after a conflict with Pharisees, the most religiously observant people of the day.
Jesus had told them they rejected him because their father was the Devil. Jesus so incited them that “they picked up stones to throw at him, but [he] hid himself and went out of the temple.”[1]
His disciples were with him as he left. They saw a beggar. They put to him a question which bothered them, just like it bothers us. They asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
They framed the question using the idea of sin, because karma is the world’s most common explanation for the circumstances of our lives. It’s the law of cause and effect: suffering is caused by sin.
But what about those born blind? Whose sin? Sin by the man while he was a foetus in his mother’s body? Or sin by his parents?
John’s gospel was the last of the four gospels to be written. John wrote it after the Temple had been destroyed. He wrote it partly as a response to Pharisees who were inventing a Judaism without Temple sacrifices. He wrote it also to encourage Christians who were being persecuted.
John introduces the question the disciples asked Jesus in order to tell us Jesus’ answer was that it’s the wrong question. The right question is, how can God’s work be displayed in this situation? As we read in verse 3:
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him …”
The disciples must’ve been stunned by his answer. Because just days before, also in the Temple, after saving a woman who committed adultery from being stoned to death, Jesus said to her, “sin no more.”[2]
John wrote his Gospel with an agenda, with a purpose. He tells us so, towards the end of his Gospel:
“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”[3]
Healing the man born blind was a sign of the messiah, as Prophet Isaiah had predicted, many centuries earlier.[4]
But John also uses the man born blind to show us that God’s grace can be unexpected – for the blind man didn’t ask to be healed.[5]
God reaches out to whomever he pleases. He does so in order to show us that many religious folk, the best-trained, the most observant, may still be blind to God’s actions.
John uses the responses of the man born blind, and the responses of others, to show us that when God dispenses grace, the results can include suffering and division as well as unshakeable faith.
There’s much we can learn from this story. For example, how fear of being cast out of the synagogue caused even the healed man’s grateful parents to refuse to answer questions from the religious leaders about their son. Fear and a need for community are very real. Did they respond wisely?
There’s a delicious irony in the story. It was Jesus who “sinned” by doing the work of mixing earth with saliva. But it was the healed man who was punished for the sin – he was put out of the synagogue. He was doubly blessed, for he was no longer under the power of the religious leaders!
Where is God acting today? How are we responding?
Peace be with you.
[1] John 8:59, the last verse in chapter 8.
[2] John 8:1-11.
[3] John 20:30-31.
[4] Isaiah 35:5; 42:7.
[5] But he did trust and obey Jesus: he went to the Pool of Siloam and washed.
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