John
9.1-41
Note: I'm greatly indebted to James Alison for his treatment of John 9 in "Faith Beyond Resentment", notes and links on which are available here
In Matthew, Mark and Luke there
are many stories in which Jesus heals blind people, but they are usually short
and to the point. John is different. He takes a long time to tell us this story
and the conversation that follows. And this is because this story is making a
big point about creation and sin.
Firstly, creation. In Genesis
we are told that the Lord God made Adam out of the clay of the ground. And
that’s a pun because in Hebrew clay is “adamah”. In today’s story Jesus does
what the creator does. The man born blind has always been without sight. He
hasn’t finished being created yet. So what Jesus does is to make some clay,
some “adamah”, and apply it to the man’s eyes to complete his creation.
And Jesus does this on the
Sabbath, which changes its meaning. The Sabbath in Genesis was when God rested
after completing creation. But Jesus is saying, creation is not yet complete,
or perhaps, it has been damaged and needs to be repaired. So the creator goes
on creating. As Jesus says elsewhere about healing on the Sabbath, “the Father
goes on working and so do I”.
Secondly, sin. The word “sin”
runs right through this story, and it’s batted back and forth like a ping pong
ball between Jesus, the Pharisees, the disciples and the man who is healed. But
what happens by the end of the story is that Jesus has taken that word “sin”
and turned it round, changing its meaning too.
It happens like this. At the
beginning, the disciples ask: “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was
born blind?” Their assumption is that sin is a defect in you that causes you to
be punished and excluded. So therefore this man or his parents must be sinners,
for this to have happened. But Jesus says they’ve got it all wrong. Neither
this man nor his parents sinned. Instead, “he was born blind so that God’s
works might be revealed in him”. That is, the work of creation.
So, Jesus heals him. And this
causes the Pharisees a huge problem, because Jesus does this on the Sabbath
day. To do any work on the Sabbath is a sin. This is a problem for the
Pharisees because someone who works on the Sabbath is clearly a sinner, doing a
bad thing – the Bible says so. But the blind man has been healed, which is a
good thing. How can a sinner do something good?
The Pharisees are agitated
about this because it threatens to undermine their identity. Their security as a group depends on them knowing
who is a sinner – other people; and who is righteous – themselves. What Jesus has
done undermines the whole basis on which they define themselves over against
others. It’s significant that we are told “they were divided”; their stability
has been undermined.
So what they do is to try and
restore the distinction between the righteous and sinners. Firstly, they try to
show that there was no miracle, the man had not in fact been blind. This would
remove the problem for them. But this doesn’t work – the man keeps insisting
that he was indeed blind, and his parents back him up.
So their second tactic is to
try to show that what had happened, which appears to be good, is in fact evil.
Jesus must be a sinner, so he must have produced this healing by evil means
such as magic. The man who had been blind must be made to admit this, and all
will be well. Up to now they are quite sympathetic to this man. It’s not his
fault after all that Jesus played a trick on him and gave him his sight. All he
has to do is agree with them, and he too can be accepted in their group, the
closed group of the righteous.
But the man, in a brilliant
piece of rhetoric, demolishes their argument. “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.”
So the final tactic of the
Pharisees is to get rid of the man himself. He, too, must be a sinner, like
Jesus. “And they drove him out.” So here are the Pharisees definitely sticking
with the idea that sin is a defect that excludes you.
But at the end of the story,
Jesus talks about the blind seeing and those who see becoming blind. And the
Pharisees say, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” And Jesus says, “If you were
blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see’, your sin
remains.”
With this Jesus redefines sin.
Sin is not a defect that excludes you, whether it is being blind or anything
else. Sin is thinking that you see, when you don’t. Or, in this story, which is
about creation, it is thinking that your creation is complete and perfect, when
it isn’t. Sin is when you construct your own righteousness, and think you have
no need of God to touch you and heal you and make you complete. And
constructing your own righteousness means defining yourself over against other
people, as the Pharisees do.
So sin is not a defect that
excludes you. It is, instead, participation in the mechanism that excludes. Sin
is the accusing finger pointed at others, rather than the people that finger is
pointing to.
Now there are many ways in
which groups of the righteous try to define themselves over against other
people. It is somewhat ironic that the Church gives us this gospel reading this
weekend, when the first same sex marriages have been celebrated in England. Some
Christian groups have been quite loud in their protest. But they have a
problem. It seems to them that the Bible says that these relationships are
wrong. But here are relationships that seem to embody good things like love,
faithfulness and commitment.
Now, this is an issue on which
Christians have different opinions. The preacher’s role is not to tell you what
to think, but to help us all as we read and reflect on scripture together.
Today’s reading shows us two approaches when something good happens where it is
not expected. There is the approach of the Pharisees, who say that however good
it appears to be that a blind person has been healed, the Bible clearly says
that this was done in a sinful way – on the Sabbath – so therefore it is wrong.
And there is the approach of Jesus, who says “my Father goes on working, and so
do I”.
But as always there is a twist
in the tale, which can catch us out if we are not wary. If sin is not a defect
that excludes you, but participation in the mechanism that excludes, then we
must be on our guard that we don’t fall back into it in a new way. For example,
if we start defining ourselves over against people who think they are righteous
because they read the Bible differently from us.
Yesterday afternoon I was
coming back to church after visiting some people when I was stopped by a man in
the street, waving a Bible, determined to get his message across. He told me
that he had spoken to twelve people that day, and “they’re all going to hell”.
And as I extricated myself from this encounter I caught myself thinking, “Oh I
do wish you had gone to preach in someone else’s parish”. And then I came back
to today’s Gospel reading, to finish this sermon, and realised what I had done.
Which was, in my mind, to drive this man out in the same way as he was doing to
people he thought were sinners.
As with so many other stories
in the Gospels, we need to read this and see ourselves both as the excluded and
as the people who are doing the excluding. In other words, we have to stop
saying that we are not sinners, and instead recognise the need we have, in solidarity
with everyone else, for God in Jesus to complete the work of our creation, and
make us whole.
If we have received the grace
of God, by which we are saved and made whole, then we are being freed from the
need to cast anyone out. The same grace that saves us is available for
everyone, which fills us with a true compassion for all humanity, for all the
Pharisees and the hypocrites and the accusers and the casters out. Because they
are us, and to be redeemed in Christ means to imagine them being redeemed in
Christ, too.
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