DATE: March 30, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
John 9: 1-41
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Trouble viewing this video? You can also find it here.
I was just sitting there, hoping that 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 weeps, feels frustration and joy, fatigue and strength 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’d listened often enough…and 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 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 emerging wonder, 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 ran back to my cup, looking 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 astonished 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 derision and disbelief.
Then came the Pharisees, as baffled and obstinate 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 rejected 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!
That he restored my sight was really the second of two miracles 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 the 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 Texts
John 9:1-41
9 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
8 The 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?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He 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.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then 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.” 16 Some 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. 17 So 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.” 18 The 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 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but 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.” 22 His 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. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 24 So 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.” 25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He 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?” 28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
39 Jesus 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.” 40 Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.