John 9: 1-38
While walking through Jerusalem Jesus encountered a man who had been blind since he was born. Those following Jesus asked him if sin had been the cause of the blindness -- the man's own [as if he had been conceived in sin?] or that of his parents. Jesus replied to the effect that the man had been born blind so that God's work might be revealed in him. "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work." With that he spit on the ground and made mud with his saliva, spread it over the man's eyes and instructed him to go to a nearby reservoir between two walls (the pool of 'Siloam,' i.e. the means of sending water) and wash [off the mud]. Once the man had washed, he could see. People in the street were confused because they thought the man who could now see could not possibly be the former blind beggar. But the man said he was one and the same. They were wanting to know what had happened to make him see. He said, "The one called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes and to me to go to Siloam and wash it off. So I did, and I can now see." The people wanted to ask Jesus about it, but he was not at hand. So they took the man to the Pharisees. It was Shabbat. The Pharisees wanted to hear the story, so the man told it again, and the Pharisees were aghast, saying, "This man [Jesus] is not from God, because he does not observe Shabbat." Others argued, saying no sinner could do what Jesus obviously had done. They were at cross purposes and so asked the man what he thought about it: "After all, it was your eyes he opened," to which the man replied simply, "He is a prophet." The Jews did not believe the story until they summoned the man's parents, who told them the same story, i.e. that he was born blind and now was able to see, but they did not know how it happened. "Ask him," they said. "He can speak for himself." They were actually afraid to say more, knowing how the Jews detested Jesus and had agreed that anyone who so much as intimated that Jesus was messiah would be cut off from the synagogue. So the Jews turned again to the man and demanded that he praise God for his new situation, saying that Jesus was a sinner. The man replied, "I don't know whether or not he is a sinner, but I know this: I used to be blind but now I see." The Jews were not happy with his answer and wanted to have the whole thing re-hashed. The man grew impatient, saying, "This is just amazing. You do not know whence Jesus? Yet he opened my eyes. If this man were not from God, how could he do such a thing?" The Jews turned him away. When Jesus heard of it, he sought him out and said to him, "Do you believe in The One Like Us?" The man asked who that One would be. Jesus replied, "You are seeing him right now; the one now speaking to you is he." The man believed on the spot. The Pharisees went on grousing. (Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook)
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As we are seeing, the Revised Common Lectionary takes us from Matthew, the normative gospel of Year A, into three lengthy narratives in the fourth gospel: the woman-at-the well, the healing at the pool of Siloam and the raising of Lazarus. This week we are given to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Siloam story of the man born blind - a narrative rich in verbal symbolism, allusion and meaning. It should not be taken as any kind of journalistic report of an actual event. It seems to be, rather, a novelistic mosaic of words and phrases carefully chosen to beam shafts of light into dark corners to illuminate what the author believed was the truth about the philosophical nature of the successor to synagogue and Jesus Judaisms, which he and, previously, Paul were instrumental in creating. On this point, consult Elaine Pagels 2003 work Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, esp. pp. 114-142.
No sooner had the fourth gospel depicted Jesus as angering the scribes and Pharisees by essentially pardoning the woman taken in adultery* then it gives us the story of the man born blind and Jesus getting cross of his detractors yet again. This time it is the violation of Shabbat decorum that is the issue. We are apt to be confused by what appear to be the interchangeable uses of the terms "Pharisees" and "Jews." One historical possibility is that the fourth gospel was an end-or turn-of-the-century document and may have reflected the growing gap between synagogue Judaism and Jesus Judaism as the latter was spinning itself off from its beginnings. It should not surprise us to learn that the whole protocol of Shabbat might have been a perennial flashpoint as the two entities put more and more space between themselves. John depicts the Pharisees/Jews missing the stunning point of the blind seeing when all they could see was a violation of the Shabbat code.
Here, of course, the faculty of sight is the central point. Who can see what? And why can't some people see, i.e. comprehend the significance of, what is directly in the range of sight? A secondary point is synagogue membership. To those on the cusp between loyalty to Jesus Judaism and loyalty to the parent community, being acceptable in the latter must often have been precluded by obvious interest in and attraction to the former. That is the position in which the evangelist puts the parents of the newly sighted man, n�e blind: a huge piece of history in one brief sentence.
The man himself is not depicted as being particularly confused. All of what must have been his association, if only through his parents, with the synagogue had done nothing to raise him from the status of a blind beggar. One encounter with the sinner Jesus changed his entire life on the spot. The man became instantly a worshipper, the text begs you to believe. Perhaps another way of stating it is that he saw what worked and what did not, and cast his lot with the one who made it work. Wouldn't you?
The blindness of the Pharisees/Jews and the pusillanimity of the parents are held up to ridicule in this passage. Institutional religion has ever hemmed itself in by rubric and canon to the extent that it loses its power to make the crucial difference. This passage from John 9 certainly does focus on Shabbat protocol, but that is not the immediate question in 2014. What should interest us is the broader attitude of which Shabbat legalisms are only symptomatic. Elsewhere in the gospel witness, we hear Jesus depicted as saying Shabbat was erected as a tradition for the sake of human beings. Human beings did not appear upon the scene only to observe Shabbat. Shabbat evolved to benefit human beings. Nothing is so sacrosanct that it cannot be made of none effect by turning it into an idol.
The impatience depicted in the man who could finally see may reflect the frustration late first century CE Jesus Jews surely felt with their brothers and sisters of synagogue Judaism. These latter apparently could not or would not see beyond the limits that tradition sought to put on the freer life Jesus Jews were living, not under the law but under grace. This could well be John saying not so subtly that the "blindness" of traditional Judaism could be cured if only its adherents would open themselves up to the understanding that Jesus had been the fulfillment of all on which Israel had banked. - For the "Jews" as John saw them correctly or incorrectly, fairly or unfairly, it was who did what when that mattered rather than the consequence of the act. If I leap off the sidewalk to save an elderly man from getting run down by a bus, it is not my act that is the point but the fact that the elderly man was neither injured nor killed. It is the consequence of an act done that counts.
* John 7:53-8:11. This pericope does not appear in many ancient collections and is thought by many not to have been an original part of John.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES