“Do you believe in the Son of Man?” From the
Gospel for the fourth Sunday in Lent, from the Gospel of John the 9th
chapter.
In
the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Since
we’ve just heard a rather long Gospel reading, the entire ninth chapter in
fact, I promise to keep my remarks brief. The chapter is rich in things to talk
about, but I will keep the number down to a few.
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
And of course, Jesus answers, “Neither…he was born blind so that God’s works
might be revealed in him.” Jesus, in other words, wastes no time in disposing
of the very ancient idea, which is still around, that illness, or indeed, any
misfortune, is punishment for misdeeds, our own or our ancestors’. God’s work in this story is the giving
of physical sight to the blind man. It is the counterpart, as it were, to the
spiritual sight which he already has. And God’s work is revealed in all of us,
as we mature physically and spiritually.
When
we think about it, we realize that we are all born blind. We have physical
sight, most of us, at birth, but spiritual sight is acquired gradually, and, in
fact, we learn how to use physical sight gradually too. By experiment and
example, by teaching and repetition, by trial and error, we learn to see. And
so it is with spiritual sight. But the remarkable thing about the newly-sighted
man in today’s story, is that he already has spiritual sight, which becomes
apparent by the end of the story. His physical condition did not prevent him
from acquiring spiritual sight long before he received physical sight. This
reminds us of the notable blind and deaf woman Helen Keller, in the 20th
century, a famous example of a physically limited but spiritually very advanced
person.
Jesus
does not have to do much to strengthen the formerly blind man’s spiritual
vision. The physical details are irrelevant to the main point of the story,
even though the Pharisees make much of them. The Pharisees in fact want to
distract themselves and everyone else from seeing the light, by concentrating
on the technique and timing of the healing.
The
behavior of the Pharisees is a step-by-step demonstration in How To Miss The Point.
They ask how the blind man received his sight. How. They express no gratitude
or appreciation or even interest in the fact of his being sighted. You would
think the wonder of it would impress them, but no, they’re interested only in
technique. Next, they talk about when he received his sight. When. The timing
concerns them, not, again, the fact of his being sighted. Then, it turns out
that they do not believe that he was ever blind at all. We call this denial. They
reluctantly get around to accepting the reality only when the testimony of a
lot of people leaves them no other conclusion. So, dithering about technique
and timing, and evading the fact right in front of them, lead the Pharisees to
abuse the newly-sighted man, and they send him away. “Drove him out,” the text
says, presumably out of the synagogue. The Pharisees refuse to allow physical
and spiritual reality to get in their way. Their way is nothing more than
mindless upholding of traditional rules, without regard for spiritual reality,
or even physical reality.
“Jesus heard that they had driven him out,” the text says, so Jesus went
looking for him. And he went looking for him, the newly-sighted man, to test
his spiritual sight. And he tests it in the classical way of every genuine
spiritual teacher: he asks the man a question. “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?” “Lord, I believe,” he said. The newly-sighted man sees spiritual reality
before him, the reality in which he believed before he received his sight, and
which he defended before the Pharisees. It is almost as though he received
physical sight as a result of his spiritual sight. His spiritual sight was the
condition that made his physical sight possible. In other words, his perception
of spiritual reality came before his physical perception, and enabled him to
see reality whole, as spiritual and physical together, in the person of Jesus.
Jesus, the incarnate Lord, human and divine.
Who
are we in this story? Do we evade spiritual reality, like the Pharisees, by
fussing about irrelevant questions of detail and technique and timing? Do we
lose sight of the main point by hanging on to traditional ways of seeing
things? Do we avoid the spiritual reality in front of us, whatever the physical
situation may be?
Or do
we, like the blind man, see, as it were, the physical world in spiritual terms?
Do we have the faith that makes that combined vision possible? How do we answer
the question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
In
the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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