Blind

Fourth Sunday in Lent  |  John 9:1-41

The story of the man who was born blind is one of the longest in the New Testament. Maybe we should think about that.

The people following Jesus see a man, begging by the side of the IM001059.JPGroad. They point to him and ask Jesus, for whose sin was he born blind?

What a question. In the entire passage, the only people who have a grasp of God are Jesus and this nameless blind man. (Surely someone knew his name. Either the gospel writer did not, or perhaps the anonymity of the man frees him in our minds.)

His blindness has nothing to do with sin, Jesus tells them. He might have said, Your ideas of God are wrong, extinct, yet you carry them around, use them to blind yourselves—this blind man sees better than all of you.

We stir up our ideas about God and smear them like mud across our eyes.

Wash it off, he says. Open your eyes.

We want reasons. The gospel writer gave us a story. We want to know the purposes of God. The gospel writer only gave us one.

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Why can’t we see that?