Sermon Notes on John 9 (read with column notes, perhaps)

The telephone rang in the office recently. The voice on the other end was from Indiana. His long-troubled marriage was moving into separation and in all likelihood, divorce. How did we get from where we were happy to this, he wondered? This long long story strikes me as a cri de coeur from John and his reading group  of what went wrong  in their emergence within Judaism. It is a story of an impending divorce, between two  facets of an ancient faith, I think. It plays around with sight and blindness as it concludes that it is a matter of seeing things in a certain light and an inability to see things as well.

When presented with a blind man, the disciples see the issue clearly. The disciples right away take the stance that someone has to be to blame for misfortune. They link it directly to punishment for sin. God must be punishing the blind man and his family, no? Centuries after the book of Job they have not progressed one inch from the position of the friends of job or in our time people who blame illness on thinking positively, as if germs and virus do not exit.Notice that Jesus will not even begin to countenance their question. Instead, he proceeds to move the person toward healing. Let the question linger here. Are the disciples blind about suffering in their midst. What do we see and not notice about suffering in our world?

Here Jesus does not heal with a word but with medicine. The ointment is interesting.something that would blind us is used as the vehicle for sight. In the face of the blindness of the disciples Jesus calls himself the light of the world. Yet, light cannot help the blind.His cured blindness will be a vehicle to see the reality of a god who wants healing not punishment.

The reaction of the religious leaders reminds me a bit of a few of the people we feed who complain about the portions or the variety of food. Faced with a miracle, they begin an inquisition that spreads out, as they are wont to do. it also becomes quite a comic parody of an investigation as the investigators are left further and further in the dark.As Bruce Springsteen would say, they were blinded by the light, in this case, the light of the world bringing sight to the blind.

While the man is healed of blindness it takes him a while to come to the blinding realization of the reality of Jesus.Physical sight has come to him, but spiritual insight seems to take time, even as it starts in a blinding flash of revelation.It seems to me that we accuse others of being blind when they do not agree with us. Don;t you see? why can't you see my point? Paul Mccartney struggled with the issue in We Can Work It Out. sometimes blindness is a sign of incapacity or perhaps inability or unwillingness to  see something as it is just too painful to contemplate. Springsteen sang I would rather be blind that to see you with your man.

God is able to see past the disappointment with Saul and the expectation for a king for what it was. god looks past appearance and age to select David. One of the attributes of God is to see clearly where we cannot. god can perceive light within the deepest darkness.

We can view so much. CAT scans peer into our bodies. We are not nearly as adept at seeing to into the motivations and viewpoints of others.Mostly we grumble at how they can be so blind not to see things our way. (see judge not book). John Calvin famously called Scripture to be a glasses. It gives us  a way to look at ourselves and each other with fresh eyes.