See
the Light
“Meanwhile,
the man born blind, who was not sure about anything—he was the one
who eventually saw the light.”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (Home by Another Way)
Most
of the stories in the New Testament are short, but the story of the
man born blind and healed by Jesus takes up one whole chapter: John
9:1-38.
Jesus,
as he was walking with his disciples one Sabbath day, saw a blind man
begging by the side of the road. His disciples asked a question
regarding sin, since in their frame of reference, disability equated
with sin. “...who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?”
Jesus
spat in the dirt and made a paste, which he rubbed on the man's eyes, then told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. When the man did
as he was told, he could see for the first time in his life. He
returned to his village and his family a changed man. The Pharisees
were not well with this business of someone so sinful and unclean
being restored, so they questioned him and his parents. Interrogated,
would be a better word. Who did this, how was it done, what do you
say about him? Of course the blind man was just happy and grateful
that he could see; he told them that only a man of God could have
done such a great and impossible thing. The Pharisees refused to swallow this bitter pill, so they took refuge in a technicality:
Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and therefore is a sinner and not a
saint. He broke the rules!
Swiftly,
they threw the once blind man out of the synagogue, which is where
he'd been all his life. When Jesus heard about this, he found the man
and asked him, “Do you believe in the 'son of Man'. The man whose
sight had been given said simply, “Lord, I believe.” The
restoration of his physical sight brought with it the gift of
spiritual sight.
We
discussed this story in the spirituality group yesterday. We spoke
about all the ways people can be blind—refusal to see the reality
of things, unable to see what is clearly in front of them because to
do so would shake up their lives. We opened the question of what are
we as a society blind to today. Some of the answers were: we are
blind to the wrongs done by our consumer economy to the rest of the
world; we are blind to the harm we have done to people of other
countries by invading and occupying; we are blind to the effects of
poverty and inequality in this country and around the world. These
were just a few examples of “blindness” listed by the young
people in the group. Their eyes are open, and they see what is. Now
the question becomes: how can we as a culture mud our own jaded eyes
and heal?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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