John 9:1-41
This passage is one of my favorites, but to really understand why you should know that I am blind in one eye (and, without my glasses, I can't see out of the other - I am the embodiment!). It's congenital, so when people ask what it's like I really don't know how to answer - what's it like to not see out of your nose? You - at least, those of you with two working eyes - see in three dimensions, and I understand that in some abstract way. You can cover an eye and try to understand, but my brain has been training since birth to compensate; I have learned a sense of proportion for everything that automatically guesses depth and distance, so I can navigate fine - I make some mistakes but they are rare and I learn to compensate, and no one thinks of me as clumsy. As far as I can tell everybody else is just wasting a bunch of brain power processing two visual streams!
I can't deny that being able to see is a benefit, but completely blind people get around, too. In the world of the blind the one-eyed man is king? I've heard that all my life, but I don't think it is true. A world set up for blind people would work perfectly for blind people. I am not creative enough to imagine that world, but I can look around ours and see that it must be true. We have light bulbs and drive quiet cars and don't see heat, we play music and use perfume and can't hear sounds above certain frequencies. This lets us do things like use electric motors, be scared of the dark, and enjoy art, but it is because we have made our world work for us - well, that is, most of us.
And so we get back to the story. Jesus and the disciples see this fellow, who is born into the wrong world. He could be king, in the world of the blind! But here he is, barely scraping by, because he is in the world of the sighted. The entire society around him - of work, of friendship, of participation in the community, of making a meal and taking a bath and traveling to visit his friends and meeting people - is completely wrong for him. In the world of the blind it would all be so simple! but in this world, he is shunned, ignored. Blind, everyone said.
The disciples jump right to the end. This man has been punished. It is bad that this man is blind. Not - hm, I wonder why we don't have a safe way for this fellow to travel back and forth to his home? I wonder why no one ever helped him learn to sew, or shape wood, or work with metal, or something else that really doesn't need vision? Nope, first response: man blind, blind bad, bad punishment, punishment sin; who sinned?
Jesus loves the man, and Jesus heals the man. And Jesus says this man was born blind so that his power could be revealed. I always hated that part. This man, this adult, has spent his childhood blind, so that this day Jesus can come and heal him. And - he rejoices! The loss of those years of sight? Count as nothing, in view of the change that Jesus has wrought in him. This is transformation, and this is what the religious leaders, the family, the entire community sees. What a gift, those years of wasted potential, that now have so much value for this man who can now see not only the wrong world he happens to inhabit but also the power of Christ so clearly.
I love this man. I don't think he is the message, not really. I am not the man; I am not even the disciples, or the parents. I am the religious leaders. I have been thinking about this passage, in a very particular and specific way, for the better part of my life, and still - I am on the wrong side of this story, and I am so far on the wrong side that I am not sure how to get to the other one.
This man inhabited the wrong world, and Jesus reached across reality and brought him into this one. There are so many people in the wrong world: blind, deaf, mute, mentally troubled, unable to walk, unable to work, different by genetics or accidents. I see them every day, on the street corners or in the parking lot or at the bus stops or in church. I pity them, I give them help sometimes - and others, not - but I don't see them, not really. I am the blind one. They were born for some other world, some world that Jesus can see but I cannot. They need structures in place that I can't imagine, and in the moment I don't even realize my foolishness in thinking that I have some idea of what help people need.
I am still thinking through this one; maybe I will think through it forever. Jesus tells us to help those in need - and help is not just a piece of bread, but changing the very structures and organization of our dark world to make it usable for people who are not in the median. I wish I had some brilliant ideas or some amazing insight, but instead I can only invite you to work through it with me over the rest of our time in this world, in prayer and supplication to the one who knows all worlds.