March 19, 2023, Are You Blind Too?, John 9 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ March 19, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above:

Below is the outline for the sermon:

1. In the OT reading. God sent a trepidatious Samuel to anoint a new king, because God had rejected Saul, the first king of Israel (that is a whole other story) Samuel knows that God has chosen one of Jesse’s many sons, and it seems like a slam dunk when he meets Jesse’s firstborn: tall, strong, attractive, a type-A personality as befits the firstborn. But no, and so it goes until he’s out of sons, and Jesse sends for his youngest, who is David, God’s chosen. And God tells Samuel: “You people always judge a book by its cover, you just look at the outside of a person, but I see into their heart.” Which is to say, human are blind in more ways than we realize. Sometimes our blindness isn’t a physical inability to see, but that we don’t know how to see. And this chap. 9 of John is all about that – the many kinds of blindness, with which we are all afflicted, to some degree or other.

2. A lot of the time, we humans are so blind that we don’t even bother to see the outside of a person. No eye contact with panhandlers. We don’t really see the young man’s face, who is pushing the long train of carts through the slush in the Price Chopper parking lot. After Jesus healed the blind man, who had been sitting begging by the roadside his whole life, his neighbors couldn’t even say for sure if it was really him. “I think that’s the blind guy who used to beg on the corner of Market St.” “No, I don’t know, I think he just looks like him.” He had been among them his entire life, but only his parents really knew who he was. It is very easy to walk past someone day after day, year after year, and never really see them.

Or maybe we just see their problems. The disciples looked at the man and saw a curse. We might look at our neighbors and see bad parenting, or lazyness, or substance abuse – anything but a brother or sister, known and loved by God. If you saw your problem neighbor, well and healed and happy, would you recognize them? Helen Keller once said, “The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.” Because there are many different kinds of blindness, and physical blindness is not the worst.

3. There is another healing story, in Luke, chap. 18. A blind beggar cries out to Jesus and Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Which seems like kind of a silly question. We all know what the man is going to say. “Lord, I want to see.” There is never a place in any healing story where Jesus offers to heal a blind man, but the blind man says, “No, thanks, I’m good.” It’s unthinkable.

4. And yet, that’s exactly what Jesus says the Pharisees are doing. “What are you saying,” they ask Jesus, “are you telling us that we are blind, too?” And Jesus answers them in his usual way – which is to say, not a direct answer – he requires them to search their own hearts, and figure it out for themselves. “If you were blind,” he tells them, “you would be without sin. But as long as you say you can see, your sin remains.” Because here’s the thing about blindness – all kinds of blindness: it can be healed – Jesus can do that. But there’s nothing to be done about blindness if you insist that you can see perfectly well.

5. I was engaged in a group conversation recently, and I brought up the problem of bias, by which I meant those automatic reactions we all have towards people who are different from us – those things that color the way we see people or interpret what they say or do. And I was surprised by the reaction to what I said. Some people were offended. Everybody else seemed to just ignore what I had said. Not one person said, “Yeah, you’re right, I really have a hard time tolerating that kind of person. I’m uncomfortable around people like that.” Nobody said anything like that. Maybe because it sounds ugly to admit that. But Jesus can work with that. Bias, prejudice, looking down on people who scare us or disgust us or confuse us – those are forms of blindness, and Jesus can restore the sight of the blind. But as long as we refuse to admit our blindness we’ll just keep on bumping into walls and tripping over cracks – we’re going to keep on hurting ourselves and others – we’ll never really see one another; and we’ll just keep on being blind forever.

6. I have always loved this chapter of John, because the healing of the blind man – and we don’t even know his name – is so complete, so astonishing, so radical. His sightless eyes begin to take in light and color and shape and movement all at once, for the first time in his life. But more – the way he sees himself is also healed. He has spent his entire life sitting in the dirt waiting for people to throw stray coins at him, and he becomes a man of courage and integrity – he’s even a little sassy. “Why do you keep asking me about him?” he quips to the Pharisees who are bullying him, “Do you want to become his disciples, too?” His parents are too fearful to stand up to their threats, but not him – he sees clearly now. And when he finally sees Jesus again and learns who he is, he sees with the eyes of faith. “Lord, I believe.” he says.

7. And aren’t we all blind beggars in one way or another?

Don’t we all look inside ourselves sometimes, unable to see anything of value, anything worthy of respect or love?

Haven’t we all found ourselves sitting in the darkness of our own limited experiences and understanding, unable or unwilling to really see all those people out there who are so different from us, so incomprehensible, so unacceptable?

Don’t we all find ourselves lost in the darkness of doubt from time to time, unable to see the hand of God in the troubles of our life, unable to find the faintest spark of hope?

If we will admit it, we are all blind. But Jesus can work with that. He came to set the captive free and to restore the sight of the blind. He is the light of the world, that dispels all darkness.

8. Jesus told the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But as long as you say “I can see” your sin remains.”

“If we say that we have no sin,” John wrote, “we’re either lying or we’re just fooling ourselves. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to wash us clean of all unrighteousness.”

Today, let us take to heart the many ways we are blind, and let us offer to God the prayer of the blind man who called out for mercy, “Lord, I want to see.”