Lent 4 Year A

John 9:1-41

In 1990 Fred Hollows was named Australian of the Year. Amid the plethora of sports stars, typically Olympic swimmers, cricketers who had inflicted numerous Ashes defeats on England (I hope you can hear my pain), and even the Seekers, Fred Hollows was an unusual choice to have been named Australian of the Year. He was a medic. Or, to be precise, an ophthalmologist. Although he was a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales, that was not the principal reason for the award. Rather, during any free time he would visit remote Aboriginal communities where there was a high number of eye diseases. Trachoma was notably prevalent, an infectious disease that can lead to the deterioration of the cornea, and permanent blindness when the eyelids turn inwards. Although the disease had been eliminated in most parts of the world, Australian Aboriginal communities were a notable exception. Hollows worked tirelessly in conducting corrective surgeries, and also by setting up the Aboriginal Medical Services. He took his work further afield visiting Nepal, Eritrea, and Vietnam training locals to perform restorative eye surgery and also conducting many operations himself. I remember watching a documentary about Fred Hollows. What struck me most was not his skill as a surgeon, which was brilliant. Rather, it was those moments in the documentary where there was footage of those blind people having their eye-bandages removed, maybe several days after their surgery for the first time and being told to open their eyes. From eighty-year-old women to young teenage children, the reaction was the same. A slow opening of the eyes was invariably followed by the widest most beaming smile one could imagine. It struck me that nobody would need to be paid to do such work, the reward was writ large on the faces of the blind who could see again.

In our gospel reading today, the disciples engage in some theological reflection with Jesus. Unfortunately, it is bad theology. It is judgmental. It debases humanity. It underestimates the compassion of God. And consequently, Jesus immediately rejects their false suppositions. They ask Jesus, “who sinned, that man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” The entire theological framework of the disciples’ question is misplaced. Their assumption is that a person born-blind must be bearing that condition as the result of a divine judgment, or curse. Jesus gives an instant and categorical rejection of that premise. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (Jn 9:3). The disciples seem to assume that moral transgression led to physical affliction, with the corollary being that if somebody suffered from a physical affliction there must be some dark sin lurking in the background. To our modern minds such an outlook is repugnant and we might be glad we are not part of the ancient world. However, before you and I are too quick to assert our superiority, may I remind you of the canon law that prior to the 1980s in a certain church tradition that stated the following. “Bodily defective men, who by reason of their physical inability, cannot safely, or, by reason of their deformity, cannot with due decorum, exercise the office of orders, are forbidden to engage in the sacred ministry of the altar.” As the canon progresses, it specifies one such condition as being “blindness, strictly so-called, namely the state or condition of a person destitute of all sight in both eyes.” For nearly two millennia parts of the church shared the same ableist assumptions of which Jesus’ disciples speak. Namely, physical afflictions or deformities exclude people from certain roles in the church, and those conditions might be viewed by some as a sign of divine displeasure or one’s sinfulness.

Rather, than engage in a lengthy refutation of these false views, Jesus simply tells his disciples that the man born blind is not only fully human, but he is the one who will receive the fulness of God’s power working in him. Here, I believe we must be careful not to entrench ableist assumptions that the blind required a cure in order to see seen as a person favoured by God. If we read this story as devaluing a blind person prior to the healing, then I believe we perpetuate discriminatory attitudes. In fact, I remember being personally challenged in my own assumptions when speaking with a deaf student born with very limited hearing. I asked her if she had the opportunity to have hearing restored would that not be what she wanted. I was surprised by the response. She said her identity was as a deaf person, she was part of a deaf community, and she would not want to give that up. This was a moment of insight for me. She enabled me to appreciate her sense of being in a deeper way. Maybe previously I had slightly pitied her, but she did not want my pity, she just wanted to be treated as a human being made equally in the image of God as any of us.

Jesus applied clay to the eyes of the blind man, then gave him the choice to wash and to have his sight restored. After this, the story takes a dark turn. The blind man’s acquaintances and neighbours struggle to believe this newly sighted individual can be the same person. Perhaps their incredulity is understandable. However, their action in taking him to the Pharisaic religious authorities results in a greater conflict. It transpires at this point that the healing had taken place on a Sabbath day. This is viewed as a transgression of the law, and hence Jesus is branded as a law-breaker. There is a lesson here for all of us. If we narrow our understanding of God into our own preconceived ideas of how God must act, then we are in danger of creating a smaller God, devoid of generous love and compassion. In the story, the parents of the man born blind are summoned to provide an account of the man’s healing. They are depicted as being fearful and guarded in their response.

If I might be permitted a slight historical aside at this point. I think it is important to understand some of the possible context of this story, so we ourselves do not end up wrongly demonising Pharisees. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees had little presence in Jerusalem, where the story is set. The Sadducees and priestly families were prominent in the national capital. The Pharisees seemed to have held more influence in the rural areas of Judea, and further north in Galilee. With the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by Titus, the ruling Sadducees were largely annihilated along with the chief priests and their families. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Pharisees stepped into the vacuum of religious leadership in the post-70 period. They taught the people, and became known as the Rabbis. Their teachings were later codified in the Mishnah and Talmud. Why is this important to know? Well, most scholars would argue that John’s Gospel was written (or reached its final form) maybe around the year 90 of the first century, that is after the destruction of Jerusalem. So, what is informing this story and its perspectives on the Pharisees is their role in the post-70 period. During this period Jesus’ followers and the Pharisees or Rabbis were making competing claims. Jesus’ followers continued to assert their core belief that Jesus was the Christ, or God’s Messiah. This was anathema to those engaged in reconstructing Judaism, no longer on the basis or the Temple, but rather exclusively on the Torah. Thus, the narrator makes the editorial comment that the parents were afraid because “the Jews had already agreed, that if anyone should confess him [Jesus] to be the Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue” (Jn 9:22). We need to be careful how we read the label “the Jews” in this context. It is an unfortunate truth that texts such as this helped create a dark legacy of unbridled antisemitism. Instead, we need to understand that those being described here as Jews, were a very small number of people in positions of power, who excluding their fellow Jews who confessed Jesus to be God’s Messiah.

At this point, our story morphs from a healing story into a narrative of conflict between those in the late first century who believed Jesus to be the Christ, and those who rejected that claim. It appears that the more influential Pharisaic leaders excluded those Christ-believing Jews from Galilean synagogues. Among the gospel writers, John alone uses the term ἀποσυνάγωγος, “to be put out of the synagogue,” here and on two further occasions in the gospel (Jn 12:42; 16:2). The story we read today ends with confession and with true sight being used as a metaphor for faith.

While the parents seem to have abandoned their son, Jesus seeks him out. Jesus declares himself to be the Son of Man and asks the man to believe in that figure. The man declares his belief, and worships Jesus. Here, according to the Gospel of John, we see the dividing line between those in this late first century context who accepted Jesus as God’s Messiah and those who did not. The former turned in worship to Jesus. However, for others that confession that Jesus was the Christ, became a point of division. The result was that such Christ-believers were excluded from the participation of the religious institutions of the day.

Such exercise of power by religious elites is not simply an ancient problem. It should lead us to ask whether we are an inclusive church? Do we have boundary lines that ostracise people – whether those dividing lines are explicit or implicit? If we do, I wonder if we can even see them. When I worked with distance education we taught rurally isolated students, but also students from the Exclusive Brethren who for reasons of core beliefs did not participate in high school education. The Exclusive Brethren community offered close and supportive relationships for group members, that was, until anyone questioned its central beliefs or leadership. Those who raised doubts were shunned (quite literally) and withdrawn from. If a mother or father questioned any aspect of the group that individual had to leave the family home, they could have no contact with their children or partner, they lost all their friends, and usually their job since they were typically employed in Brethren owned businesses. It strikes me as similar to the early Jesus followers being put out of synagogues. In a theocratic society adherence to group values and norms can become an all or nothing existence. To leave is in fact to leave everything. Yet, sometimes, the act of leaving is itself an act of becoming. That is becoming free and receiving a new vision of human flourishing.

The story of the man born blind challenges our own narrowness. Even today it challenges our own ableist assumptions as my deaf-friend called me to examine what deafness might mean for one born with that condition. We are called to listen to people and then, maybe like Fred Hollows, to work on behalf of those who seek help and justice. It also challenges my understanding of church, do we constrain the grace of God, do we think we are the custodians of the limits of God’s goodness? If so, then I fear we have not learnt who Jesus is, we have not worshipped with our whole hearts, and we have excluded those whom God loves. So today I pray, with you, that we may have an inclusive vision as we worship and adore the one who is Lord, not only for those in the church but also for the life of the whole world, this day and always. Amen.