Fourth Sunday in Lent; 19 March 2023; Lent 4A (RCL); 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41.
This episode in John’s Gospel provides a prime example of how the whole Gospel is structured, with the beginning and the end of the story as reflections of one another (the question of the blind man’s sin, bracketed by the question of the Pharisee’s sight). Along the way, John changes the definitions of both sin and sight, and frames them in reference to Jesus alone.
The reading from 1 Samuel also concerns sight, and provides an interpretive key for dealing with the Gospel reading. God does not look at things the way we do; training ourselves to see as God sees is non-trivial, and requires an interpretive community. When Samuel shows up with a heifer, it is no wonder the elders of Bethlehem were worried — the only sacrifice that involved a heifer was the expiation of an unsolved murder. The village nearest the body had to sacrifice a heifer because no murderer could be found (Deuteronomy 21:1-11). Samuel’s ruse will keep Saul from thinking Samuel is hosting a feast (which he goes on to do). And, of course, David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, in the field with the sheep, is God’s choice for King.
In the story of the blind man, Jesus’ disciples begin by questioning who sinned, the man or his parents. Since he had been blind from birth, it is odd to think that his sin might be the cause of his blindness, but it would be a question to ask if misfortune were always seen as the result of sin. Jesus replies that neither the man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind in order that God’s works might be revealed (φανερωθῆ phanerothe, made visible, shined forth), irony if ever there was.
The whole chapter follows the rule of twos of Greek drama — two characters (or groups) per scene, and one character changes between scenes (Jesus and his disciples/Jesus and the man/the man and his neighbors/etc). The man only appears in the second and second to last scenes (the last scene is Jesus and the Pharisees, reflecting the first scene of Jesus and his disciples). The central scene involves the man’s parents and the Pharisees. Following the form of Greek drama, the central scene is where the action is, the climax of the story. In this scene the parents refuse to answer for the Pharisees how their son now sees, because “the Jews” has already taken the decision (agreed is a very weak translation, the word implies a formal decision) that anyone who confessed him the Christ should be ex-synagogued. Here is the story of John’s community. Because they confess the Christ, they have been thrown out of the synagogue, the real question the story answers concerns their sin (from the perspective of Jewish authorities) and their vision, what they see.
When the neighbors of the man as if he is the one who was born blind and used to beg, he replies ἐγώ εἰμι ego eimi, I am. Greek is one of those languages in which the pronoun is already present in the conjugated verb. To use the pronoun (ego) emphasizes it: I myself am. The only other person to use this phrase in John’s Gospel is Jesus in all of the great I am discourses (I am the bread of life). It is the phrase used in the LXX for the divine name. We might translate it I AM. The healed man is claiming divine status for himself. To translate the phrase as I am he downplays the shock. In this passage Jesus does not even use the phrase when the blind man, at the end of the story asks Jesus who the Son of Man is in order that he might believe in him. We would expect there, but don’t find it. The healed blind man is the carrier of the divine in this story.
And what the story reveals is the works of God, which go far beyond simply restoring the sight of a man blind from birth. The works of God amount to seeing Jesus for who he is, and seeing the blind man as divine. In this case, we all could find ourselves in the situation of the blind man, not seeing our own divinity. If we persist in not seeing the blind man’s divine status, or our own, we are like the Pharisees in the story, who remain blind, and therefore continue in our sin. But, we don’t come this vision on our own. The blind man has been cast out of the synagogue, but after he is cast out, Jesus finds him, and invites him to trust in the Son of Man (in other words, to join the Johannine community).
The story defines sin as the failure to see the divine in Jesus or in the blind man (ourselves, and others we count as sinful). To see is to encounter Jesus in the midst of community. To work the works of God is to restore the sight of those blind to their own divine status (ourselves included).