Who Sinned?
4 Lent
April 3, 2011

We’ve all asked the question—sometimes for ourselves, but often on behalf suffering people we know and love. What did I do wrong, that God is punishing me? What did he, or she, do to deserve this? It’s a natural, human response to pain or misfortune. There must be some reason for it, and when we begin looking for a reason, we often seek the reason in a moral failing or weakness. This tendency, or temptation to blame someone’s misfortune on some personal failure is even more pronounced when it comes to people whom we don’t know.

So for the disciples to ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” is the kind of question we might ask ourselves—oh, we might not use that word sin, because we don’t really like it any more, but when someone has a heart attack, or cancer, our tendency is to search for something in their past behavior to explain their current predicament. And of course, when it comes to the destitute, we are even more likely to place the blame on their shoulders.

So too, the disciples, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.” This long gospel story from John is carefully constructed drama with several scenes and a shifting cast of characters. It is complex and multilayered with each layer or scene of the story challenging us to make sense of it.

The story begins with the disciples’ question and continues with Jesus’ response and his healing of the blind man. The formerly blind man goes back home and is confronted by disbelieving neighbors and acquaintances—was he indeed the blind man they had known? The man answers in the affirmative, stating that it was “the man Jesus” who had put mud in his eyes and told him to wash them in the pool of Siloam.

Then comes the encounter between the healed man and the Pharisees. The gospel writer adds a minor detail to the story—it was the Sabbath when Jesus had healed him. Like the neighbors and acquaintances before them, the Pharisees did not know what to make of this healing, of the man, or of Jesus, who had healed him. So they asked the man what he thought of Jesus. “He is a prophet,” came the reply.

Unsatisfied, the Pharisees called the man’s parents. They wanted to know if he was indeed born blind, or if he was a charlatan. But his parents didn’t want to get involved. He was born blind, they said, but how he was healed they had no clue, and didn’t want to speculate.

So the Pharisees bring back the man to ask him again. Here we see the drama intensifying. When first asked by his neighbors who healed him, he answered “the man Jesus.” When first asked by the Pharisees what he thought of Jesus, he replied, “He is a prophet.” Now his answer is much bolder, and echoes the words of Nicodemus we heard two weeks ago: “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.”

The answer outraged the Pharisees and they drove him away. At this point Jesus comes back on stage and asks the man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds with his own question, “Who is that?” Jesus replies that he is the one who healed him. And the man says, “I believe” and worships him.

As I said earlier, this little drama has layers of meaning. It is very carefully constructed to heighten the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees, and the man and the Pharisees. To understand one level of the drama, we need to remember that the Gospel of John was written around the year 100, at a time when the early Christian movement was in the midst of deep conflict with Judaism. That conflict is written back into this story, because one central part of the drama, the response of the parents, does not fit Jesus’ own lifetime. When the gospel writer says that his parents were afraid of the Jews because they had already decided to put out of the synagogue anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, we know that reflects the situation not in Jesus’ own day, or even in the generation after, but only at the end of the century.

As we look forward to Holy Week, we need to keep in mind that there is a strong strain of anti-Judaism in the gospels, especially in John, but that in no way reflects the situation in Jesus’ own day. We might be tempted to write off the portrayal of the Pharisees, and indeed of all the Jews in the story as nothing more than another example of John’s anti-Judaism. But we need to wrestle with it, because it tells us something profound, not only about the gospel, but about the Christian community in which it was written. The reason the Pharisees, the Jews, are portrayed in such negative terms in John is because of his community’s experience with Judaism.

This story gives us some tangible evidence of that experience. Because of their confession that Jesus was the Messiah, this little group of Christians had evoked the anger of Jewish leaders in their own day. In response, they wrote that opposition back into the gospel. As they reflected on that conflict, and on their faith in Jesus Christ, they came to understand and experience him in new ways that are reflected in the gospel. That is one of the reasons that Jesus in the Gospel of John seems so very different than in the other gospels. This background experience is a crucial part of this story because it is through the confrontation with the Pharisees that this blind man comes to see.

The story is about healing, but not only about the healing of a man born blind. As Jesus makes clear in his response to the disciples’ question, he was born blind that God’s works might be made manifest in him. But lest we think that Jesus, or the gospel writer, intends for us to think that God decided to have this man be born blind so that one day, many years later, Jesus might work some magic on him, Jesus goes on to say that, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

The gospel writer is telling us a story about a man coming to faith. Of course his blindness is a physical ailment, of course it is real, but his blindness is also symbolic. And although his physical healing takes place quickly, the transition from spiritual blindness to sight is a much longer process. After being healed, he goes home and apparently begins to go about his business rather matter-of-factly. Only when his neighbors and others begin to question him, does he seem to wonder about the meaning of his healing. They bring him to the Pharisees, and under their questioning, he first identifies his healer as a man, then as a prophet. Only after the Pharisees continue to hound him, does he conclude that Jesus might be even more than a prophet. But still, he needs a final encounter with Jesus to truly see.

This transformation takes place in the context of all of that religious conflict and indeed, religious convention. It begins with a simplistic religious understanding—who sinned, this man or his parents. The drama is driven by religious authorities who are offended by Jesus’ actions on a number of levels, and are also offended by the man’s growing faith. Here, we see Jesus challenging religious convention and religious tradition. We expect to be on his side in the conflict with the Pharisees.

But of course things are never quite so simple as that. When we find ourselves, as we so often, and inevitably do, in the midst of religious conflict, which side are we on? Are we on the side of religious convention and religious tradition, defending the way things have always been done, the way things God designed them in the beginning? Or are we on the other side? No doubt you are saying that things are different now, but are they?

This story shows us a man coming to faith in the midst of and through conflict. The gospel of John was written in the midst of and in response to conflict. We want to sweep conflict under the rug to ignore it or suppress it, but here we see conflict as an impetus to deeper faith. I wonder about the disciples in this story. What did they learn? They began with a simplistic question and watched the drama of faith unfolding before their eyes. Did they come to see, as the man born blind came to see? Did they come to faith? Are our eyes so blinded by religious tradition and religious convention that we cannot see God doing a new thing, that we cannot see the Light of the World?