Blind Spots

Blind Spots

John 9:1–7, 35–41

Lent 4, March 15, Memphis First United Methodist Church

John 9.1-7, 35-41

 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” [sih-LOH-um] (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

Now the middle part of this story reads like an episode of Law and Order, all that’s missing is the Dun Dun:

Folks begin arguing about whether this man who can now see is really the same man who used to sit and beg.

The religious leaders bring him in for questioning. Some insist the healing cannot come from God because it happened on the Sabbath. Others are not so sure.

Then they call the man’s parents to testify. The parents confirm he was born blind, but they refuse to say more, because they are afraid of being expelled from the synagogue.

The leaders question the man again. He tells them plainly what happened: “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

The exchange grows sharper, and finally John tells us they drive this man born blind out.

And here’s how the story ends:

35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Move I — In the Middle of Lent 

Well, here we are in the middle of Lent, with the mark of ashes a distant memory and signs of the Passion coming quickly into view. 

In the early Church, those readying for baptism at Easter heard this story from John as part of their preparation.  Baptism was called photismos (foh-tee-SMOSS), which means “illumination.”   

Because to meet Jesus in baptism is to begin to see the world differently, with an imagination for what life, love, and justice look like, expressed through the vows we take to renounce our sin, confess our faith, and accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form they present themselves. 

Photismos.  Hold on to that, you’ll see that again.

So, this Fourth Sunday in Lent gathers us here with this text for one purpose: to let Light examine us. To have what we preferred hidden be brought into the open.  And one of the things the Light quickly exposes is how eager we are to assign blame.

Think with me about how often this happens. 

Our phones ding with “breaking news.” Before we even look, we brace.

What now? And who’s to blame for it?

Because if it’s someone else, our world still feels ordered, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t look, think, vote, or worship like us.

If blame can be located “over there,” it does not threaten who we are or the story we tell about ourselves.

So, in a strange way, blame steadies us. It gives the illusion of control by relocating the problem somewhere else.

That instinct is more than personal. It’s political. Institutional. Theological.

Entire systems are maintained by it. If suffering can be reduced to personal failure, the system remains untouched. Unquestioned.

And sometimes we sanctify that logic.  And when we do, we usually  call it God’s will.

Which brings us to John’s Gospel, where the disciples see the man born blind and immediately turn him into a theological question:

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?”

Move II — Jesus Refuses the Premise

Because in the world they imagine, blindness must have a cause, and someone must be to blame.

 Jesus, though, refuses to inhabit that cramped imagination. He will not be bound by the certainty they have built out of their theology.

Now, in fairness, the disciples were not inventing their question from nothing. It echoes in the Hebrew Bible. In Deuteronomy, obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings consequence. In Proverbs, the righteous flourish and the wicked fall. 

It was a way people trusted that God is just and that actions matter

But when that conviction becomes the only lens, suffering collapses into accusation, because pain must be repayment, and every wound must be someone’s fault.

And yet Israel’s own story pushes back against that certainty. Job sits in the ashes and refuses the straight line from suffering to sin. The psalmists cry out when the wicked prosper and the innocent ache.  This is no binary choice.  Scripture holds both moral order and unresolved grief, and Jesus is stepping into that living argument by saying:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

I don’t know about you, but that last sentence causes me to squirm a bit, as if this man’s condition is not about who sinned but happened to make God look good. That doesn’t seem right either, does it?

But stay with me here. The word John uses here for "revealed" means to bring into the open what was hidden. The gospel writer uses the same word at Cana at Jesus’ first miracle in John when water becomes wine and glory is revealed. He uses it again when the risen Jesus makes himself known to the disciples.  In John, revelation is never an end unto itself.  It is light, the Light,  falling where darkness had settled.

God didn’t make him blind to make a point later; No, Jesus is refusing to let blindness define him.  Even here, in his one wild and precious life (thank you, Mary Oliver), God’s life-giving work will not remain hidden.

And that’s a problem because revelation unsettles those who depend on explanation to keep order intact.

Move III — The Wound of Theology

See, blame theology does not stay in the realm of ideas.

It lands on people already carrying more than enough, their own pain, and the shame others place on them.

It’s one thing to suffer.  It’s another thing to be told your suffering has a theological reason.

Look, here’s the truth, as earthy as it is.  Sometimes… stuff happens.

Bodies fail. Storms come. Systems break people. And when suffering is forced into a theological equation, the wound deepens.

But here is the harder truth. Some of us have repeated that story.

Maybe not harshly or intentionally. Maybe even wrapped in prayer.

Too often, we try to explain someone’s suffering rather than accompany them through it.

Sure.  Suffering is real.  Consequences are real.

And if we have ever passed along a theology that wounded someone already wounded, then maybe today we, too, are in need of new sight.

But notice,  blame isn’t at work here.  Jesus begins with presence.

Move IV — Grace Kneels

Watch what Jesus does.  He kneels, spits in the dust, makes mud, and touches a face.

Interesting, isn’t it?  In the beginning, God formed humanity from dust and breathed life into it. 

Here again, dust and breath meet, with a little spit mixed in.

A life this man never imagined is born. 

Let me tell you about my daughter-in-love, Laura.  She’s a midwife. It’s a calling she heard and fully embraced after giving birth to my grandson, accompanied by a midwife of her own. From her, I have learned that while skill and training are necessary, new life does not arrive through explanation. It comes with presence. 

Presence that comforts through every labored breath and strain. A persistent presence that stays when things stretch and encourages when they tremble. Her work requires hands steady enough to handle what is emerging, and a heart big enough to hold all that is happening before her. At its best, it is messy. And it is sacred work.

So when Jesus kneels in the dirt, we are watching holy midwifery.

Because grace isn’t afraid of the dirt.  It’s found there.

Move V — The Seduction of Certainty 

But this healing, as amazing as it is, doesn’t end the story. Oh, no.  We’re just getting started.  

The leaders say, “Wait! We know this man is a sinner.”  He has to be, otherwise everything we think we know is in peril.

Turns out, blame theology does not surrender easily. It grows into certainty. And certainty feels safer than mercy, because mercy disrupts the story that keeps our world predictable.

Certainty hides inside  “We know.”

We know how the world works.

We know how God works.

We know how suffering works.

When “we know” becomes the loudest sentence in the room, listening stops. Curiosity fades. Repentance feels unnecessary. Anyone who unsettles that certainty becomes a threat.  And one healed body cannot be allowed to dismantle the framework used to explain everything.  

While the healing happens in an instant, the interrogation stretches on. Certainty always defends itself, and eventually it drives the man born blind, now with sight, out.

The word John uses here is strong.   It means to throw out, to drive beyond the boundary. It’s the word used for casting out what does not belong.

But hear this: he is not cast out for his blindness, or even for being healed.

He is cast out because his healing unsettles their certainty.  

Move VI — Grace Goes Looking 

Sit with that for a moment.

This man is driven out because his life has become a theological problem.

It’s what happens when labels fall away and a person finally comes into view.

And Jesus went looking for him.

This is what Gospel does. Jesus finds those religion casts aside.  

And this is where the story turns toward us.

Because we know it is possible to speak the name Christian and still defend arrangements that push people to the margins. We see it done in ways large and small.

We see it when faith is conscripted into nationalism, when Jesus’ name is used to sanctify racial hierarchy and political dominance, when sacred language shields privilege and baptizes fear, and when empathy is dismissed as weakness and labeled unchristian.

Hear me:  empathy is not unchristian. It sits at the heart of the Gospel. It is what the Word becoming flesh looks like from the inside. It is what moves Jesus from observation to action, from distance to dirt, from explanation to presence. Every healing in the Gospels begins with someone being fully seen before they are healed.

Without empathy, Jesus never kneels. Without empathy, there is no mud, no touch, no sight given.  No compassion.

Compassion literally means “to suffer with.” Empathy recognizes another’s pain. Compassion moves toward it.

When that kind of compassion disappears from the life of the church, the symbols of our faith begin to carry meanings they were never meant to bear.  So the cross becomes a banner of exclusion rather than a sign of self-giving love, and something essential has been distorted.

While we may not do it in the same way, the impulse beneath those distortions is not foreign to us. We, too, can protect our comfort and call it faithfulness. And sometimes the line between defending the gospel and defending ourselves grows thinner than we want to admit.

Which brings us back to the man driven out because his life didn’t fit.

Move VII — Sight Becomes Insight

The one who has never seen now finds himself standing before the One who gave him sight.

“Do you believe?”

“I believe,” he says.

And he worships.

Sight has done its deeper work, here.  It has become insight.

Light has moved from the eyes to the heart.

The leaders remain unmoved. “Surely we are not blind?”

Jesus answers them directly:

“I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who think they see may become blind.”

And suddenly the story makes something clear.

The only people in this story who remain blind are the ones certain they already see.

All of us have blind spots.  Hear me.  All of us have blind spots.  

The problem is imagining that we do.

And when we cannot imagine it, we close ourselves to the Light trying to show us where those blind spots live and who they harm.

Yet Scripture has always carried another current beneath all that.

I think of the prophets who envisioned a world not secured by exclusion, not organized by fear, not stabilized by certainty.

They imagined deserts blooming.

Exiles coming home.

Circles drawn ever wider.

That is what the early church meant when it spoke of baptism as illumination, photismos.    There it is, told you you’d see it again. 

To be illumined is to see what was always there but hidden with an imagination wide enough to hold what certainty could not.  

A prophetic imagination (Thank you, Walter Brueggemann). 

Which is why, in this story, imagination stops being a dream.

It becomes a body kneeling in the dirt, touching a face no one else would touch, seeing a life no one else had truly seen.

Because the grace of sight reaches deeper than opened eyes.

Lives long overlooked finally come into view.

And where that kind of grace is present, new life has a way of being born.

Holy midwifery.

One thing’s for certain, once we see it, we can’t unsee it.

Because Jesus finds.

Light shines.

And Grace keeps coming.  

Thank God.

Amen.