Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
© Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
March 26, 2017
Scripture: John 9: 1-41
I was just sitting there, hoping my neighbors might be feeling generous that day. I had a couple coins in my cup to clink together – barely enough to buy a bit of bread, but enough to get the attention of passers-by. It being the Sabbath, I was feeling optimistic. Folks always gave more on the Sabbath – although my need was just as great the other six days of the week. They would pass by on their way to or from the temple, stirring up the dust where I sat, and toss a coin my way in hopes that their act of charity would put them in a good way with God.
I often wished I could look those people in the eye, wished I could stop them in their tracks with a piercing gaze…. because I wanted more than anything else for them to look at me, to really see me, not just the cup in my hands; or the holes in my robe; not just my bowed head… but ME – a person, alive and breathing, a person who laughs and cries, feels frustration and joy, fatigue and hope and hunger – just like any other person.
In the Torah, in the book of Genesis, it says that people are made in the image of God. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” (1:26) I know, because I’ve listened – from a distance – as the scroll was being read in the temple. And I’ve wondered about that. Wondered whether it really meant, some of us are made in God’s image… It seems like that’s what the Pharisees think, anyway. Or wouldn’t they have been more inclined to notice me? I may not have been able to read Holy Scripture, but my hearing was just fine; I know what I heard… so I wondered.
I had plenty of time to wonder. I was born blind. I don’t know why. It just happened that way. My parents say I was an otherwise healthy baby, with a lusty cry and a big appetite. It’s just my eyes that didn’t work. Still, everyone assumed that it must have been something I did – some terrible offense carried out against God while I was still being knit together in my mother’s womb, or some unspeakable sin committed by my parents…Honestly, I’ve never felt any more or less sinful than anyone else. I just feel like me. So sometimes, when people asked me what I did to end up blind, I asked them, “What did you do to end up with eyes that see?”
It wasn’t being blind that ruined me; it was how people judged me because of my blindness. I could have worked, if only someone had given me the chance. My arms and back and legs are strong enough. I can haul water and push a cart. When I was little, I used to bake bread with my mom. I loved kneading the dough, the warm, silky feel of it under my fingers and palms, and the aroma as it baked. But who would buy bread from a blind baker? I am considered cursed.
So there I sat with my begging cup, listening to my clinking coins, the shuffling of sandals, the bray of a donkey, the creaking of wagon wheels, the cry of venders…when I heard a man speaking, somewhere off to my left. He spoke with authority, and I wondered whether he might be a visiting rabbi – I knew he was a stranger, because I’d never heard his voice before, and I’ve been sitting in this town square long enough to recognize every distinctive voice. That’s what got my attention, but then I realized: he was speaking about me. And what he was saying was extraordinary: that neither I nor my parents were responsible for my blindness; that God’s works were being revealed in me. God’s works…in me!
For a moment, I wondered whether my hearing was going the way of my sight, because never before had I heard anyone suggest that I was anything but a broken and worthless sinner. Then the man approached me. Got right down in the dirt next to me. He was so close I could feel his breath on my face and smell the sweat clinging to his skin. I heard his fingers scraping in the dust, heard him spit and then knead the dirt, and all I could think was: He is breaking Sabbath law. Everyone knew that kneading – whether dough or dirt – was prohibited on the Sabbath…
But before I could protest, before I could ask the man to please step away, lest I be accused along with him and banished from the temple grounds, he cupped my face between two calloused hands – hands of a laborer, I thought –a carpenter, maybe – so not a rabbi after all? – and rubbed the mud onto my eyelids. Now, I’ve been spat at; I’ve had dirt kicked in my face. But here was this man smearing dirt and spittle on my eyes … and I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been touched like that – touched at all, for that matter, by anyone other than my mother. His hands were firm, gentle, his actions deliberate, and I found that I trusted this stranger implicitly. So when he told me to go wash in the pool of Siloam, I went, without question.
What happened next is… indescribable. I found my way to the pool, knelt down and washed away the mud that coated my eyelids. When I stood, I was overwhelmed by a strange and unfamiliar sensation, a sensation I realized, with astonishment, was sight. I could see. I could see the pool of Siloam and the road, the braying donkey, the creaky wagon, my own cup, abandoned on the ground a little way from where I stood…and I could see all the people walking to and from the temple.
I stumbled back to my cup, still disoriented by this new world of sight, and looked all around for the stranger who had worked this wonder, but nowhere could I pick out that distinctive voice. Instead, I found myself surrounded by neighbors – neighbors even more bewildered than I at my newfound condition. “Who are you?” They asked me. “It’s me.” I said, “It’s still me!” But they only looked at me with expressions I soon came to recognize as disbelief and disdain.
Then came the Pharisees, as baffled and frankly belligerent as the others. No matter how many times I told my tale, they could not seem to believe me. “Don’t you see?” I said to them. “He put mud on my eyes, and told me to wash, and now I see.” Ironic: that I should have my sight restored, only to be denied and dismissed yet again. Ironic that the one thing I could see most clearly was the very thing that remained somehow imperceptible to these religious officials: that the man – carpenter or rabbi I still didn’t know, and it hardly mattered – that he was clearly a man of God: a prophet!
I say all of them, but that’s not entirely true. There was this one Pharisee who had a deep crease on his forehead, like he was working out some difficult calculus in his head, like he was torn between two opposing views: “How can a man who is a sinner perform signs such as these?” he asked the others. I seized the opportunity to chime in: “Exactly! 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!”
In the end, the Pharisees were not swayed. My testimony meant nothing to them, because I meant nothing to them. I was still just that blind beggar, mired in some unknown sin, raised on the wrong side of the tracks, with none of their scholarly credentials. My clothes were too baggy; my sun-baked face was too dark; my speech was too coarse. they shifted nervously and held their coin purses close, as though I was not just a beggar but also a thief, some kind of con. In the end, they threw me out of the temple, like I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about; like I was the one who had committed some offense, and not the person who had been healed…
Angry, discouraged, unsure what to do next, I returned to my spot outside the gate. Where else was I to go? That’s where Jesus found me. I should have known him right away, but I guess I was feeling overwhelmed by the events of the day. He asked me whether I believed in the Human One. Assuming he must be talking about that Man of God, the one with the calloused hands and the gentle touch who had changed my life and caused such a stir, I looked him in the eye and said, “Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” And that’s when it all clicked into place: the sound of his voice; the powerful, tender look in his eyes, the smile; so I knew it even as he said it:
“You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
“I believe,” I said. “O yes! I believe.”
The funny thing is: I would have said so even if I my eyes hadn’t been fixed. That this man Jesus restored my sight was really the second of two wonders he performed that day. The first was that he noticed me at all. That he saw God at work in me, a blind beggar. My whole life, I had been ignored. Object of ridicule and theological debate, but never the subject of someone’s genuine interest. Then along came this man and told me what I had always suspected, but what I had longed to hear confirmed:
That the Spirit of God is inside me, that I am whole and precious – and always have been. Now, that Spirit is shining right out through my opened eyes, so that others can see it, too. Now, I can see all of the other precious things and people in God’s creation. Now, I can look my neighbors in the eye, I can stop them in their tracks with my piercing gaze… and with my eyes and with my words I can spread the news – incredible good news: That this God of ours, the one who created us in God’s own image, the one who shaped us out of clay with loving hands and breathed into us the breath of life … that God is alive! And at work! And shining through the life and ministry of this carpenter-teacher-prophet, this man… Jesus!
I don’t know what you think, but it seems to me that those Pharisees and a few others are missing the point, when they spend all their time pointing fingers and blaming suffering on sin, when they scour the crowds to find all the “pure and perfect people” to serve in the temple, and congratulate themselves for throwing the rest of us a few coins. I am beginning to wonder if they’re actually reading those Holy Scriptures that they hold so dear.
After all, didn’t Father Moses, who led our people out of exile, suffer from a stutter? Didn’t Jacob limp for much of his life? Wasn’t Sara barren? And Abraham too old? Maybe that’s why God chose them in the first place, because they understood struggle, because they had cultivated strength in the face of suffering and disappointment. Or maybe, just maybe, our own ideas about perfection are just completely off base. Maybe God who works through a blind beggar, works in all of us, rejoices in each of us, just as we are, whole and precious.
All I know is, I was blind, and then Jesus saw me. To God be the Glory! Amen.
Scripture
John 9:1-41
9As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
8The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” 12They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
13They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” 16Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” 18The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight 19and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” 22His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” 25He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” 28Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
35Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
39Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.