Read John 9
There is a pseudo-condition called Domestic Blindness. If you suffer from (usually male) Domestic Blindness you will be familiar with the experience of spending ages searching for an item in the house. When all options are exhausted, you have to ask for help – only to be told by your spouse that the item has been right in front of your face all the time.
Domestic Blindness sufferers can spend five minutes looking for a pair of glasses that they are already wearing.
Sometimes the inability to see something has less to do with our eyesight than with our mindset. Things that are in plain view suddenly become invisible to us.
This is the kind of thing that is happening in the encounter recorded in John 9. The story is jam-packed with vivid characters. Rich in ironies. A blind man who can see better than almost anyone around him. Leaders of the people thrown into confusion. Heated debate, anger, insult, accusations, humour.
Unusually for the gospels, the main conflict is not between Jesus and the authorities. Although off-stage for much of the drama, Jesus is the centre of the debate.
Healing
First moment in the story is that Jesus saw. It is the smallest action that sets off the whole of the rest of the events. Jesus seeing the man born blind sparks off a conversation from the disciples. They ask about the causes of the man’s plight – whose sin made him blind. Presumably without Jesus taking notice of this man, the party would have passed by without comment or incident.
Jesus brushes aside the question of causes and focuses instead on purpose before reaching out to him and healing by placing mud on his eyes.
Jesus is not present when the man receives his sight. Almost immediately the healing causes confusion. First, the neighbours start to talk about him, arguing over whether this is a healing or a case of mistaken identity. He struggles to make himself and his own story heard in the clamour.
When they take him to the Pharisees, the confusion multiplies. They ask him again and again to tell his story. This remarkable healing clashes with the way that they think the world should be, and they react against it. At first they disagree on whether Jesus is from God or is a sinner.
The Pharisees ask the blind man’s opinion on who Jesus is.
Then to compound the confusion they are unable to believe his account without his parents’ testimony. It is in this rather hostile distrusting that he would have has set eyes on his own mother and father. Sensing trouble, his parents give some very cautious answers and refer the panel back to the man healed of blindness.
The last time the Pharisees call on him, they give him a big helping hand by including the “correct answer” with their question – “Give glory to God, we know that this man is a sinner”. The threat is clear – giving us the “wrong” answer will be dishonouring God.
Blindness
There is something strange going on here. This man – who we can see is clear-thinking and not easily swayed – is a witness to something remarkable. Yet even with remarkably clear evidence he cannot make his own story believed.
One of the things that prevents the Pharisees from seeing what is happening right in front of them is that they interpret the situation solely in the light of their own understanding of the world.
This is what we all do naturally. Our own understanding of the world leads us to make assumptions and judgements. Most of the time this works very well for us. But it can also blind. If something happens that does not fit with our understanding, it is remarkably easy not to see it altogether. That is the kind of dynamic going on. Often it is innocent – we could hardly approach every new situation entirely free of assumptions.
When the disciples see him all they see is “sin”
When the Pharisees see him all they see a threat to their authority. When the Disciples see him they see sinfulness.
But there are cases when intentional lies are spread in order to advance a particular cause. That’s what is going on at the end of the interview with the Pharisees. “you were steeped in sin from birth!” They are deliberately discrediting this man because he is a threat to their authority.
Poverty
One area in our time is the way that some of the most vulnerable people in our society are spoken about. They are represented as a dangerous, immoral and lazy underclass leaching off the rest of decent society. This of ideas about poor people has saturated much of our media, public debate and passing conversations.
Four churches, the Baptists, Church of Scotland, Methodists and the United Reformed Church have together produced a report – The Lies we tell ourselves – ending comfortable myths about poverty. It asks how we came to accept such an distorted view of poverty in Britain and it lays bare six of the most powerful myths.
These myth are,
- They just don’t want to work
- They waste their money on drink and drugs
- They are not really poor – they just don’t manage their money properly
- They are on the fiddle
- They have an easy life
- They caused the deficit.
The report shows how truth has been distorted and facts manipulated to create a false impression of the most vulnerable in society. For example, Churchgoers and the wider public cite addiction as the second most common cause of child poverty. In fact, fewer than four per cent of benefit claimants report any form of addiction.
“As Christians we are called to have a distinctive and joyful presence in the world. Our calling leads us to seek after truth, and that means facing up to our own blindness as well as holding others to account.
“The truth is that poverty is an injustice crying out for correction and cannot be explained away as the problem of individual families. Responding with charity can help to break down the barriers in society and is a partial solution, but we all have a moral responsibility to build a more just and more understanding society. As Christians we believe that the infinitely loving creator, shared by us all, demands no less of us.”
Come back to that action of Jesus seeing. “He saw”. And when he saw, he saw more than sin, and more than a theological conundrum or a threat to his position. Jesus saw a person made in the image of God with the potential to bring glory to God.
The first step in tackling injustice is to be able to set aside the opinions that we have formed or inherited and to see into the lives of those who suffer injustice.
Domestic Blindness prevents us from seeing a pair of shoes resting on a shoe rack. Spiritual blindness stops us from seeing where God is at work right before our eyes.
Open our eyes Lord