"I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." So goes a line of the popular hymn "Amazing Grace." And today's reading from John 9 is also about the blind seeing. In a recurring pattern from John's gospel, blindness here functions on two levels. A man who was literally blind has been healed by Jesus, but by the end of the reading, blindness has become a metaphor. Jesus says, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."
Once more it is the learned, religious folks who cannot see. Their certainty about the rules, about the proper channels and methods that God would use, blinds them so that they cannot recognize Jesus. Worse, they are convinced he is the enemy of God because he doesn't fit their doctrines and their understanding of Scripture. As religious experts, they know, they understand, they "see." But in the presence of God's power and wisdom in the flesh, they become blind.
My own Presbyterian Church (USA) has been embroiled for years now in arguments about whether gays and lesbians may be ordained as elders, deacons, or pastors. As Presbyterians, we naturally go to the Bible to see what it says, and then we claim to know, to understand, to "see." It makes me wonder about that questions the Pharisees ask Jesus. " 'Surely we are not blind, are we?' Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, "We see", your sin remains.' "
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