Blindness

In my first teaching position at Walt Whitman Middle School, I met a few women who were interested in forming a book club.  Ashley, my English teacher friend, chose a novel by Portuguese Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago called Blindness.  Eager for the opportunity to discuss literature again, I bought the book and read it through almost immediately.  The book club never materialized but I will never forget that book.  It was very heavy and dark, about an epidemic of blindness, a blind society.

Because Chris is essentially on travel this week coming home only to fall, exhausted, into bed, I am going to stretch my writing muscles and focus on a few more meaty subjects.  Most of you probably visit Frodo Seven to check in on our family antics so this may be a good time for you to take a break.  If you're up for it though, I invite you to read about my thoughts on a few different topics including last Sunday's gospel, forgiveness and reconciliation and my reading of the popular book, The Giving Tree.

So, back to blindness.  Yesterday's gospel was all about blindness but before I get into that, a few introductory comments about the interpretation of scripture.  I was talking to someone recently who asked me, "Who are we to interpret scripture?"--meaning, I think, that that kind of thing should be left to the experts, the phDs.  Perhaps because I have a background in literary analysis, I have a different perspective on things.  First, the bible must be the most accessible book ever written.  If it were only meant for the elite, what would that mean about the hope of salvation of the masses?  When we read scripture, we interact with it and interpret it in a way that is unique to who we are.  What makes a reading good or faulty has much more to do with whether or not it is based in the text than who does the reading.  When we venture off into the world of wishful thinking or creative writing, saying more what we hope a text means than quoting what it actually says, we are no longer dealing in reality and therefore our interpretation lacks merit--that's true of a phD as well as an average Joe.

That said, yesterday's gospel was John 9:1-41.  I encourage you to read it before reading my comments.  

So, here's the scene-- there's a man who has been blind from birth sitting by the road where Jesus and the disciples are traveling.  Seeing the man, the disciples ask Jesus about the sin that caused the man's affliction.  Later in the passage after he's been healed, the pharisees say to the man, "you were born totally in sin and are you trying to teach us?"--an indication that the disciples' thinking isn't so far off from that of the pharisees at least initially.  Jesus makes it clear that that kind of thinking is not God's thinking and says that the man's blindness "is so that the works of God might be made visible through him."  The disciples watch as Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, puts it on the blind man's eyes and tells him to wash.

Up to this point, the interesting thing to me is that, if we look at the whole scene, the blind man is probably "seeing" the most clearly of everyone other than Jesus.  He's been blind from birth and is considered a sinner and an outcast.  He must be dependent on others for a lot of things.  How can he possibly see himself in any way other than as abnormal, deficient and helpless?  Which is basically the condition of the whole human race since the fall of Adam.  So ironically, in God's eyes, the blind man may have been seeing more clearly than anyone, even the disciples whose question about sin implied that they themselves were somehow more righteous or whole than the man because of their own health.

So, with mud on his eyes, reminiscent of the dust from which he was made, the man washes as Jesus asked him to and can see.  And voilá--no one recognizes him.  Here he is--for the first time in his life, able to see the people he knows and loves and many deny him.  No, they say--can't be him.  

So they call his parents.  And this is my favorite part.  If you think about how short the gospels are given all that Jesus did, you have to wonder how the gospel writers chose what to include and I wonder about this story about the parents.  I've never heard a priest talk about this but when I listened to the gospel yesterday, I realized--oh wow--his parents totally threw him under the bus.  Instead of standing with their son and answering the pharisees' questions, they "were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Christ he would be expelled from the synagogue"--so they said "He is of age, question him".  Of course, their son ends up being expelled himself after which Jesus seeks him out.  The man then makes an incredible declaration of faith.  He doesn't just see, he SEES.  And his parents?  The cowards who were perhaps too close to the miracle to believe it?  They were presumably still welcome in the synagogue, worshipping in blindness.  They missed their chance to truly see.  Perhaps forever.

Meditating on this gospel, I pray for courage and a simple heart that loves God above all else.  I pray for peace in our world, a peace that begins in our families and even in our own individual lives.  I pray to try to see as God does as much as is possible through this veil of tears.

Thank you for reading.  More to follow.