Everyone who sees this blind man sees a scandal, but Jesus sees a person. The disciples see the blind man and wonder whose sins caused the man to go blind; the man’s own sins or the sins of his parents? It is like when I saw a guy with a rat’s nest for hair walking down the street the other day. I uncharitably thought to myself, “What is that guy on?” He was a problem. He was a scandal. He must be nasty in some way.
Of course it was completely possible that the man was actually very sick and just needed to get out of the house for fresh air. Maybe, he had done nothing wrong. I did not think of that possibility at the time. I was too interested in imagining the scandal.
Like
the disciples, wondering if the blind man’s life is tainted by sin, I wondered
what this crazy haired man had done wrong.
We tend to see scandals walking past on the sidewalk, but Jesus sees a
person.
As he and his disciples are walking along, Jesus sees the blind man. He sees his distress. He sees his need. He sees that the blind man needs to be restored. In sort of a flashback to the beginning of creation where God takes some mud and shapes and forms a human, Jesus spits into some dirt, mixes it into mud and spreads in on the man’s eyes.
I have seen my children do something like this. A beloved creation made out Play-Doh gets broken. Let us say that an arm gets broken off of a person they have made. So, they will open up the same color of Play-Doh and fashion a new arm.
Now, my kids could have gotten distracted by trying to find out who broke the arm off of their creation. Who caused the harm? Who caused the scandal? And, then a fight could ensue where one says, “She did it!” And, another says, “No, you did it yourself.” And, the bickering could go on and on and on and on until a certain parent’s head starts to pound. Not that this has ever happened before. But, if it had happened, guess what never takes place? That is right, the creation never gets fixed. The scandal becomes a distraction to seeing the need.
But, Jesus sees and fixes his beloved creation. Jesus works the mud to heal the blind man’s eyes. The blind man goes and washes in the waters just as instructed. And, after the man has washed, he can see! It is amazing. This man, who has been blind from birth, can finally see! It should be a wonderful day, but that is not how the world works. Remember, where Jesus sees a person, the world sees a scandal.
“Is that the guy who was blind?”
“It’s not him. It just looks like him.”
“I’m the man! I’m the man! I’m the man!”
“You can’t be. How did your eyes get opened? It is impossible.”
“The
man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam
and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
The man was healed of a lifetime of blindness. It was supposed to be a day of rejoicing. Sadly, the people do not see him, not really. They only see the scandal. They only see a hoax being played on them. They are blind to the man. They do not see him. They do not rejoice with him. They do not welcome him, and eat with him, and discover his amazing story. They become fixated on the scandal.
Here is the scandal: Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath. Jesus had done work. The Pharisees forget about the man and become fixated on the scandal of Jesus. “Is the formerly blind guy who he says he is?” “Did the healing actually happen?” They drag the man’s parents into things to establish that he really was blind and was healed. Then they turn their attention back to Jesus and what a sinner he must be because he healed on the Sabbath. And, though they are giving the formerly blind man lots of attention, thoroughly interrogating him, they do not actually see him. They are distracted, worrying about establishing how sinful Jesus is for healing on the Sabbath, against the Law of Moses.
They are blind to the formerly blind man. They cannot see him. And, that is why in the end of the story these accusers have failed. Sin is still clinging to them. The scandal has blinded them to a very real person. The scandal has blinded them to the work of the Lord to restore the world, one person at a time. The scandal has blinded them to the amazing goodness of Jesus. And, because the scandal has blinded them to Jesus, it has blinded them to God. They cannot see.
When I first saw the young teen, I glanced briefly into her room in the children’s psychiatric ward at the hospital where I served as a chaplain. She was singing quietly to a young girl, cradling her, rocking her back and forth as the young girl cried over and over about how she missed her mom and dad. The nurses had placed the little girl into the bottom bunk of the teen’s room, and they were wise to do so. She was a gift to that psychiatric ward. She was a gift to that little girl.
Later, in the children’s spirituality group that I led, I had a chance to talk to the loving teen. The little girl was still clinging to her arm, even at group time. I asked the teen why she was in the children’s psychiatric ward. She responded, “I do not always make the right choices. I am here a lot. But, lots of kids don’t make good choices. Do you want to know what I actually think? I think it is because my parents can’t see the good that I do. They can only see the bad. Plus, I think they wanted a vacation and couldn’t convince someone to take care of me.”
Of course, you and I know that parents cannot just admit children into a psychiatric ward because they want to take a vacation, but there was still some truth in what the teen thought. It seemed as if her parents did not really see her. They did not see her the way the staff saw her, as a loving asset; someone who would love a little child in the throes of grief. They did not see her the way the little girl saw her either, as a loving someone to whom she could cling. The parents seemed distracted by the scandal of their own daughter, and the scandal caused them to push her away.
The formerly blind man would understand. If the teen could write a letter to the man, he would have nothing but sympathy because the Pharisees drove him out of his community also. The formerly blind man tried to convince the Pharisees that Jesus could not possibly be a sinner, because God does not obey sinners. Jesus must be the real deal because God listened to Jesus and healed the blindness. The Pharisees did not buy it, and they threw the guy out of their community, even though he was telling to whole truth.
Everyone who sees this blind man sees a scandal, but Jesus sees a person.
He found the man; Jesus that is. Jesus searches for the man who had been cast out. The man was lost, but not because he had done anything to become so. The man was pushed into being lost.
I wonder how many good, good people are pushed out for no good reason, and become lost. How many people have nowhere to go and no one to care about them?
But,
the formerly blind man had someone who cared.
The formerly blind man had someone who would search and find. The Bible literally says:
Jesus
heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you
believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that
I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one
speaking with you is he.”
Everyone who sees this blind man sees a scandal, but Jesus sees a person. And, because Jesus sees him as the beloved child of God that he is, someone who needs healing, someone who is lost through no fault of their own, because of all of this Jesus welcomes the man into his fold. The formerly blind and scandalized man is found.
What if we, the followers of Jesus, did a little more seeing of people rather than scandalizing? What if we, the followers of Jesus, committed ourselves to look at a person, not as a problem to be taken care of, but as someone who needs to be healed? What if we admitted to Jesus that sometimes we are the blind ones, only seeing the scandal and not the person?
What if Jesus came and found us? What if Jesus seeks us out whenever we become lost, like a sheep who has wandered away? What if Jesus walks into our dark valleys and finds us, not wanting us to live in fear? What if we who are lost are found? After-all, we are. We are found. Jesus finds us, and draws us near. The world pushes people away, but Jesus embraces us all. That seeing, that finding, that embracing of the people of the world, is called, “grace.” It is a grace that opens its arms wide on a cross to embrace us all. What if we embraced that person of grace back?
In words that embraced Jesus back, the man declared to Jesus, “’Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him.” And, so do we.
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