Blame
You might think this virus isolates us, but blame might just isolate us more.
We read the entire chapter, all of John 9, to hear this story. If you just read the first part, verses one through twelve, you might believe this is scripture about healing. And that would be a very different sermon, one that might even seem more relevant for this time.
But Jesus doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about his healing powers, so I won’t be either. Instead of healing, what he talks about at the end of this chapter and the whole way into chapter 10 is judgment, who is in and out of these religious groups, and who is missing the point of his message. Jesus talks about sin, the actions that separate us from a full life. These aren’t too dissimilar from the things the Pharisees, the religious leaders are also concerned about. Even the disciples are concerned about it. Who can we blame when things go wrong? Who is responsible for hardship? Who is the source of these bad things? Who sinned? Everyone’s asking these questions. But Jesus is the only one who brings a new answer to these ancient questions--maybe even to us today.
Here’s what we know. There was a blind man. He doesn’t get a name, but we know he was blind. But even before Jesus even interacts with the blind man, the disciples ask their teacher, Jesus, a question about this blind man. “Rabbi,” they ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Right here, at the very beginning, we get a sense of the way people understood the world to work. The disciples saw a blind man, decided his blindness was a punishment, and the only curiosity they had about it was who they could blame for this blindness. I’m sure they thought, although they should know better by now, that Jesus was just going to give them a clear answer. It was either the A. the parents or B. the man. Someone was to blame. Jesus went with option C. none of the above. In doing so he upends the assumption that being blind was a punishment. Instead, Jesus sees it as an opportunity.
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus said, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
A very important note here, too. Jesus doesn’t say that the man has to be healed so that God’s works might be revealed in him. He just says that he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. Just a thought.
After this conversation between the disciples and Jesus, that’s when this healing takes place. Jesus spits in the mud, plops in on this guy’s eyes, makes him go wash, and that’s that.
Except for the conversation continues. Because this story just might not be about healing, but blame.
Next up, we have the Pharisees being not so different than what the disciples were like. They have corralled this poor man to try to get answers about what might be happening. You might miss it, because the Pharisees ask a lot of questions about the healing, and are perturbed also that Jesus was healing on the Sabbath. But at the end of when they were interrogating this man, they land in the same place that the disciples began, when they tell this man, “You were born entirely in sins.” This was really their ultimate concern. Which is to say, they still saw the man’s blindness as punishment for something or someone. Take away the blindness, and who is there to blame? His healing upended their system of justice. How is there this structure of being able to point the finger at someone else if there is no punishment? What do we care if you were healed if it upsets our sense of order, of who is in and out, and how we are better than those we can condemn as sinners?
At this point, after all their questioning, the Pharisees are so distraught about this man and what he represents that they kicked him right out.
Can you take a moment and imagine what this must have been like for this man? If you think you’ve had a disorienting week, this might be your guy. He started out doing what he always did, sitting and begging. And at that point, even though that doesn’t sound like the most fulfilling life, he also still was connected to his parents and his religious community. Then, Jesus shows up, makes some mud with spit, and the man is healed with it. Then, everyone starts pestering him, when maybe they should’ve been still helping him. The crowds ask him question after question, lead him before the Pharisees, who ask even more questions. Then! Insult after insult, this guy’s parents, who are petrified themselves, totally throw him under the bus. And now just because someone gave him some eye mud, the man who was formerly blind gets booted from his community. So you get your sight but you lose your family, all in this outrageously short amount of time. We might see this as a miracle. This guy might have some other words for it.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, scripture says. Jesus knew that he had been isolated and abandoned, and so, Jesus found him.
Jesus found him! You might think the healing was the most compassionate thing Jesus did. I think this is. When blame isolates us, spreads us out, keeps us from acting compassionately toward one another, Jesus finds those who are most vulnerable and reveals himself to them.
It takes an awful lot of work to keep our Christianity a religion that is busy chasing alongside Jesus after those who are vulnerable, like the man who was healed, instead of hanging back and debating blame and sin with the Pharisees. It takes a lot of work to keep our individual selves out of company with the Pharisees. While Jesus is off finding and caring for the vulnerable, giving them dignity and welcome and a chance to belong, we might be back bickering amongst ourselves.
Perhaps you will feel that even more sharply in these times. There’s going to be plenty of blame because we have plenty going wrong right now. We have lots of words, talking heads, politicians behind podiums pontificating about failures, about what went wrong, about who is to blame. And there is and will be time for justice and accountability. That’s a message Jesus was familiar with, too.
But let’s not lose sight of those who have been kicked out, who are truly isolated, waiting for Jesus, waiting for us who are supposed to be like Jesus to find them. We can see blame, or we can see opportunity.
God’s works might just be revealed in us, too.