I’m sure you’re all familiar with the old joke about the pilot and three passengers –an atomic scientist, a boy scout and a priest- aboard a plane that develops engine trouble mid-flight. The pilot rushes back to the passenger compartment and exclaims, “The plane is going down! We only have three parachutes, and there are four of us! I have a family waiting for me at home I must survive!” With that he grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane.
The atomic scientist jumps to his feet and declares, “I’m the smartest man in the world. It would be a loss to all humanity if I were to die today!” With that he grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane.
The priest and the boy scout are now all that’s left. With alarm on his face the priest says, “I have no family. I am ready to meet my Maker. You are still young and have your whole life ahead of you. You take the last parachute.”
But the boy scout replies, “Hold on, Father. Don’t say any more. There’s still two parachutes left. The world’s smartest man just jumped out of the plane wearing my backpack!”
Sometimes the supposed experts don’t grasp the most basic things. We see that with the religious leaders in our gospel reading for today. They can’t seem to come to terms with the reality of Jesus curing the man blind from birth. And so they strap on a backpack rather than a parachute and insist they are right.
There is a very important verse that I want to pay particular attention to because I think it is key to understanding the whole gospel, and because it is so often misinterpreted. It is verse 3 in the beginning right after the disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” And Jesus replies, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
I have heard this verse interpreted to mean some very disturbing things. When times are tough I’ve heard people use it to say things like, “Well, I’m sure God has a plan.” Or, “God is testing me.” Or, “God is teaching me something through this trial, I just haven’t learned the lesson yet.” Some people imagine God micromanaging every aspect of life. I’ve even heard things as ridiculous as, “God made sure that parking spot was available for me because he knew I couldn’t arrive late for the meeting.” Give me a break! If God really does regularly arrange things like that then when I get to heaven God’s got some explaining to do! Because by my opinion, life’s not fair. And it should be if God arranged things that neatly. But, people receive merit or favors they don’t deserve; meanwhile deserving people don’t get the benefits of their labors.
In the gospel reading the disciples come with a pretty standard understanding of fairness to the situation. They ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Obviously someone must have done something wrong for this man to be disabled. But Jesus’ reply is that that way of thinking is wrong. This man was born blind so that God’s works could be revealed.
Now you cannot say, “Well, therefore if someone’s disabled or suffering it is so God’s works can be revealed.” That’s still missing the point. The answer is, “Maybe, but then again, maybe not.” The thing is, no one thought fits all.
The disciples asked, “Who sinned?” In the case of birth defects it could be that someone did something wrong. If a woman does the wrong things while she is pregnant the fetus can be affected for life. The child born will suffer the consequences of its mother’s sin. But, birth defects can happen when the mother does everything right too. In that case no one sinned. Does that mean it’s God’s will? Some people will say that. But I still would disagree. I disagree because it is still forcing God into our categories of right and wrong. And that is the root of the problem the religious leaders are having. The blind man’s healing just doesn’t fit, but look how hard they try to make it fit. This chapter reads like a politician caught in a scandal and he’s doing everything to deny it.
First, in verse 16 they say Jesus must be a sinner because he did this healing on a Sabbath. But then there’s the problem that Jesus did do the healing, and in their minds no sinner could do that.
So in verse 18 they decide that this man must not have actually been blind. So they call in his parents. His parents confirm: yep, it’s our son, and yes he was born blind. And being savvy they say, “We do not know how it is that now he sees…”
Now they clearly bring out their categories. In verses 28-29 they say, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” So now they’re not calling Jesus a sinner, they’ve just saying they don’t know where he’s come from.
After the former blind man bests them in their interrogation of him they say in verse 34, “You were born entirely in sins, and you are trying to teach us?” So now they’ve labeled the blind man a sinner so as to dismiss him, which is what they do later on in the verse. This is easy to miss, but verse 34 ends with the words, “And they drove him out.”
“And they drove him out.” We don’t speak the way they did then which is why we miss this, but when something was driven out it was demon possessed. So they have effectively gone from discrediting this man, to calling him a sinner, to considering him demon possessed. All of this is an effort to keep their categories of how God has to work preserved.
At the end of the gospel reading the blind man gets to speak with Jesus again. Some Pharisees overhear and say to Jesus, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
Jesus has spoken to the heart of their problem. They insist that they are right. They insist that they and they alone know about God and know what God is up to. It is this very assurance that makes them wrong.
The Pharisees insist that God is about rules and regulations and laws. And because of that they can never seem to see that God is about grace and love. So they remain blind. May we not make the same mistake. It is very easy to become blind to God’s new ways when we insist on our own old ways.
This gospel reading is huge and we could spend hours looking at it. We’ve only looked at one piece, but there is one other detail I want to look at in closing because it fits well.
When the Pharisees interview the blind man for the second time they say to him, “Give glory to God! We now that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” So the Pharisees have commanded him to give glory to God. And what do we find when the blind man meets Jesus again? It is in verse 38. “He said, ‘Lord I believe.’ And he worshiped him.”
Yes, the blind man did obey the Pharisees. He gave glory to God alright! He did it truly. And that is our response too. We do not do well to worry about fair and unfair. We make a mistake when we judge others. We are blind when we insist we know how God works. But we see when we give glory to God. Amen
