Sermon 03/02/08 (John 9:1-41)

“Healing with Mud Pies and Spit Balls”
John 9:1-41
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 2 March, 2008
Fourth Sunday in Lent

 Our scriptures are rarely just what they seem to be. We become so accustomed to the stories that we have “known” since childhood -- Noah’s ark evokes a joyful picture on a Sunday School wall; Jesus allowing the little ones to come to him reminds us of cheerful songs about Jesus “loving all the children of the world.” And this morning’s Gospel lesson gets lumped into a whole list of healing miracles -- proof for us that Jesus is really great! But is this story about Jesus healing a blind man really as uncomplicated as all that? We know already, from the simplest reading of the story, that things aren’t just hunky-dory for the man once he gains his sight. He faces harsh questioning from those around him -- no one seems to rejoice in this miraculous healing. But that is not the only sign of trouble in this message from the Gospel of John.

First, consider the healing miracle itself. What would it actually be like to suddenly be healed of a disability you have had your entire life? In the movie “At First Sight,” Val Kilmer plays a man who has been blind since childhood. At the insistence of his girlfriend, he undergoes an experimental surgery to restore his sight. The girlfriend is tremendously excited -- and feels her boyfriend should be too -- about the possibilities that sight will add to his life. But rather than a smooth and wonderful transition into the seeing world, when the bandages come off the first glimpses of light and sight are absolutely terrifying for Kilmer’s character. He has no idea what things look like! Things we take for granted, such as the shape and look of a soda can, are completely foreign to a man who has become well-adapted to the world of the blind. Visual shapes mean little to a man who has seen with his hands for so long. Vision is actually blindness to him.

Although the blind man from this morning’s gospel faces social problems after his healing, his physical transition to the seeing world is apparently seamless. Jesus made a mud pie with his own spit, rubbed the mud on the guy’s eyes, and poof! suddenly he could see! Granted, this is a miracle story, so maybe the man experienced none of the difficulties that the blind man of the film had when he regained his sight. Perhaps it really was that easy. “Oh, thanks, Jesus! I can see now!” Besides, the lesson from John leans strongly toward the metaphorical: “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.’” That said, I still want to know what it was like for the blind man in those first few moments, days, months of vision.

My difficulty in grasping the apparent ease with which the blind man transitioned into the world of sight is one thing. But I have a deeper difficulty with this well-known story. Frankly, there is something I just don’t like about it. Yes, this is a story from our Holy Scriptures, and yes, I generally find great meaning and poetry in the Gospel of John. But there is something that troubles me about this gospel, and it is played out in a prominent way in this story.

Notice, if you will, the way in which “the Jews” are referred to in the story. (1) “The Jews did not believe;” (2) “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.” The Pharisees do not get much better recommendation: (1) “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath’;” (2) “Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’” Those referred to as “the Jews” are portrayed as frightening, unbelieving, and harsh. The Pharisees are seen as accusatory, yet some readily “admit” their own blindness. Neither are painted in a positive light.

The funny thing is, Jesus, himself, was Jewish, and the blind man may have been too. Indeed, in the earliest days after Jesus’ death, before “Christianity” was a separate religion, it was merely considered a subset of Judaism. Therefore, when the author of John’s gospel refers to the “frightening, unbelieving” Jews, he is clearly referring to some other Jews, besides Jesus. And what of “the Pharisees”? When I was growing up, I thought that the Pharisees were “the bad guys,” because they were portrayed as legalistic and against Jesus. In truth, they were simply a scholarly group of Jews who were known for their adherence to Jewish law.

Yes, we know that the author of John’s gospel does not really mean that all Jews are bad, or that the Pharisees are a particularly virulent sect of Judaism. But that doesn’t change history. In his book _Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews_, Catholic author James Carroll reveals a frightening statistic. He tells the story of a college professor who routinely asked his students what religion Jesus was. Some students answered “Catholic,” most answered “Christian.” Only “a distinct minority” answer that Jesus was Jewish.1 Although these were young students, most of them were not stupid or otherwise ignorant. I remember being shocked when I learned, at around the age of 13, that Jesus was a Jew! A friend of mine indicates similar shock when learning this fact. Some people never realize that Jesus was not, in fact, the “first Christian.” And this failure to consider that Jesus was a Jew his entire life has had some drastic consequences in history. The tendency to take the scriptures as we have them in front of us today -- scriptures containing phrases like, “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews” -- at face value, as “gospel truth,” if you will, has sown the seeds of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, and helped those seeds to flourish. Regardless of how the author of John meant his condemnation of “the Jews,” the scriptures have been interpreted for centuries as “proof” that “Jews” are below Christians. That fact is never more clear than during the season of Lent, as we approach the Cross. Although the notion is slowly changing, for centuries “the Jews” were blamed for Jesus’ death -- an idea not surprising when one reads some of the lines of John’s gospel, in particular.

Is it blasphemous to be questioning the very words of our Bible? I firmly believe that it is not. I cannot find Gospel, or good news, in words that have led to centuries of anti-Semitism, because I cannot believe in a God who condemns the Judaism with which God made a covenant before Jesus came along. Therefore, I must question. I must search for Gospel deeper within the text. I can believe in the healing miracle, but I cannot believe in the prejudice that has arisen from scriptures like the one we heard this morning. Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan writes,

"For Christians the New Testament texts and the gospel accounts are inspired by God. But divine inspiration necessarily comes through a human heart and a mortal mind, through personal prejudice and communal interpretation, through fear, dislike, and hate as well as through faith, hope, and charity."2

The Bible was not written for us to just soak in at face value. If such were so, theologians would not have spent millennia studying just to understand little bits of it. As a human of faith, I, too, must question. I must study. I must wonder, “Is this how things really were?” When we do not question, we risk complacency. We risk the possibility of thinking, “O, when the author of John speaks of ‘the Jews’ here, he is speaking about all Jewish people, just as I know them today.” We risk the carelessness of inching toward intolerance. We risk the ease of not loving over the difficulty of loving neighbor. We risk the very meaning of our faith. And that is simply not worth it to me.

Now let us pray.




1 James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 71.
2 John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?: Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995), 152.