Lent 5 – 2026
John 9:1-41
Marian Free
In the name of God Source of all Being, Living Word, Giver of Life. Amen.
“Who sinned? This man or his parents?” In the face of inexplicable or unbearable loss it is easy to come up with trite, seemingly pious explanations. (“They are in a better place.” “God must have wanted another angel.”) In our effort to make sense of the senseless, we attribute to God characteristics that have little to do with God and more to do with our own need to understand. In so doing, we not only trivialise the pain and the grief of another, we also diminish and trivialise God.
When someone dies after a long and painful struggle, it might be appropriate to express the view that they are now at peace or with God, but when a young person is tragically killed in an accident or slowly dies from cancer, it is tempting, but irrational to attribute to God a reason for the death, or to try to minimize the pain. To assume that God allows a person to die because heaven does not yet have enough angels is a gross presumption that we know what God needs – or even to assume God has needs.
Human life is precarious and what happens to one or another person is often completely random – natural disaster, reckless driving, genetics – are all things which (with the possible exception of the last) cannot be predicted or protected against. God certainly doesn’t visit suffering on the unsuspecting for some bizarre self-seeking motive.
The question of human suffering, especially in relation to accidents of birth, was a matter of concern to people who did not have our medical knowledge. Why someone might give birth to a child with epilepsy, or a child without sight, and another might not was a complete mystery to our forebears. In the absence of understanding people looked for someone to blame. God was not exempt from this desire to attribute a cause for suffering. Indeed, a refrain that runs through the Old Testament is that “the iniquity of the fathers will be visited on the children.” In their their original context these words referred specifically to the consequences that idolatry and the disobedience of the whole nation would have on future generations. In fact, sin generally referred to the nation and their propensity to abandon God. It did not refer to individual wrongdoing.
In today’s account of the man born blind, Jesus points out that there is a flaw in the kind of thinking that blames a parent, or grandparent for the suffering of a descendant (no matter how distant). God does not and will not inflict suffering on the innocent as a consequence of the actions of the guilty.
Unfortunately, Jesus does not go on to undo the false thinking that has grown up around unexplained suffering and inexplicable impairment. Having dismissed the misconception, Jesus goes on to attribute an alternative meaning to the man’s blindness. He suggests that in this instance the man’s condition of blindness provides an opportunity, not only for Jesus to give the man the gift of sight, but also for him to reflect on what it means to be blind and what it is to really see[1]. To really see Jesus claims, would be to know that he was sent by God and that all that he says and does comes from God.
Jesus’ healing of the blind man is disruptive on many levels. As a consequence of receiving his sight, the life of the blind man and his family is irrevocably changed. The man has to decide what to do with his sight. He only knows what it is to beg and to be dependent on others. What can he do now? He has no skills, but presumably he cannot continue to beg. His family have to adjust to living with someone who no longer needs the sort of support the man has needed his whole life. Hopefully a family’s love will find a way to rejoice and move forward, even so the future is unknown and will have to be navigated in a new way.
If the family are confused, the Pharisees are more so. Not only are they confused, but they are also threatened. who have more to lose. Who is this man who heals on the Sabbath, who doesn’t follow the rules, and who gains the attention and loyalty of the crowds? They do all they can do discredit Jesus, and to dissuade the crowds from taking him seriously.
As we have seen throughout the gospel, the Pharisees simply cannot allow their imaginations to be stretched. They have found a way to limit and contain their relationship with God. They have made it manageable. If Jesus is who he says he is, then what becomes of the structures and rules that they have built up? What happens to all their preconceptions about God and about the Messiah? Unlike the man born blind, they simply cannot allow a crack to form in their carefully constructed system of belief. Jesus does not fit their preconceived image, so he cannot possibly be who he claims to be.
In the face of such dissonance, the refuse to allow their eyes (minds) to be opened, and they hold even more firmly to their cherished beliefs.
The account of the man born blind is more about understanding who Jesus is, than it is about the miracle of sight, more about seeing with our hearts than with our eyes. It challenges us to ask what cherished beliefs and practices have we allowed to come between ourselves and God? What beliefs and practices have we set in stone as if we already know all there is to know about God? What is it about God that makes us so uncomfortable that we have blinded ourselves to the possibility that God is more than we can ever know and will reveal more than we are ready for?
If God were to open our eyes, would we be grateful or terrified?
[1] It is a mistake to assume that God made the man blind just so that Jesus would have an entry point for his discussion, for that would not move the debate any further forward.
Tags: Man born blind, Seeing, sin and its consequences, suffering, understanding
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